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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22519777">Interdisciplinary</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/namako/pseuds/namako'>namako</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Piece</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ace is a good guy too, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, Angst, Bepo and Penguin aren't evil either, Canonical Character Death, Dark, Dark Eustass Kid, Dark Luffy, Dark Marco the Phoenix, Dark Straw Hats, Dark Zoro, Dehumanization, Double Penetration, Except Shachi, Gangbang, Hospital Sex, Humiliation, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mostly Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Non-Consensual Blow Jobs, Non-Consensual Spanking, Non-Consensual relationships—all of them, Objectification, Out of Character, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Possessive Luffy, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Some comfort, Spitroasting, Victim Blaming, ambiguous ending, everyone is dark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 11:02:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>39,946</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22519777</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/namako/pseuds/namako</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoro gripped his hair, and stared into the tired, golden eyes. Fuck, Law was good at what he did, whether being of use or being used.</p><hr/><p>
  <b><i>Please</i> read the tags and warnings. Dark fic. Favourite characters are dark. Contains <i>no</i> healthy shipping.</b>
</p><p>No main "ship", though the top three feature prominently, and Luffy rules the roost.<br/>Epilogue as requested now complete, May 4.  <br/><b>Comfort chapter (12) added Jan 29, 2020.</b></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eustass Kid/Trafalgar D. Water Law, Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco/Trafalgar D. Water Law, Killer/Trafalgar D. Water Law, Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar D. Water Law, Portgas D. Ace &amp; Trafalgar D. Water Law, Roronoa Zoro/Trafalgar D. Water Law</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>121</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. hard day's night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Trigger and Content Warning</b>: Graphic depictions of non-consensual sex, rape, mature content, trash talk, prejudice. Author does not endorse any of what follows IRL. Supportive Straw Hats and healthy relationships are the best. This fic contains none of that. Hit the back button if these themes aren't for you.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter 1: a hard day's night</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>Marco had Law pushed over the desk hands pushed into the wood. The slut loved it. The operation was a success. It had been dicey. They were exhausted. They hadn't been sure they were going to succeed, but they had, and now the head surgeon, the young fucking upstart, was rocking <em>under</em> him, as he should be. Marco had taught him everything he knew. Law tried to reposition for comfort, but Marco drove his head down.</p><p>"Stay still. Let me fuck you. Stress relief, you know."</p><p>It was true, the surgeon was pretty responsive, but he wasn't really into it. He'd crawled into the medical team from the back streets of some shitty country torn up by bullets and the billeted, and he was brilliant but he was trash.</p><p>Luffy had let him on the team so long as he was of service at times to the needs of the other doctors and staff. You could see he'd had experience. Who living on the streets hadn't? and the way he'd complied, eyes on the stethoscopes and scalpels and shiny machines and ways of expanding his knowledge, those strange tattoos on the backs of his hands all grabby with a covetous ache, let you know you could do anything to him, so long as he got what he wanted.</p><p>Zoro, a nurse regarded all too often as an orderly—fucking tired as shit and also looking for relief—barged into the room. Marco turned his head without missing a beat and lifted Law from the table, while shovelling his cock long and hard into his arse—Law expelling a surprised breath of air, and Marco shunted him forward, more a part of the second doctor than any part of himself.</p><p>He wrapped his arms diagonally across Law's bare chest, and draped him over his own head surgeon's chair, over the arms from the side. Zoro came to the front of him, and Law reached for his hamstrings as Zoro released his cock and found Law's mouth to be very accommodating.</p><p>They had the chair wheeled out and ready after taxing operations for just this purpose. Zoro liked the way Law had to grip his buttocks. The intent and desire in that. Marco didn't know why Law had expressed surprise. Maybe he was winded. As folks knocked off their shift, they knew where to come. It wasn't anything new that the hole he was now using or the other was sought out by all.</p><p>As such, the surgeon relaxed his throat slightly, and Zoro clutched his hair, and stared into the tired, golden eyes. Fuck, he was good at what he did, whether being of use or being used, and Zoro let out all his frustration at the patients who had him running back and forth from the front office to their bed, and at Law's short temper, and at the fact that this seedy fuck from the lower regions of life was making hand over fist his monthly salary in a day. He let it all out into that soft welcoming mouth. Felt good. The taste of privilege. The choking. The pooling and spilling saliva shot lava to his belly and groin.</p><p>"Good slut."</p><p>Law undone.</p><p>Marco knew what made Law feel good, and he brushed his back, noticed the shiver. "Think you're hot shit cos' you save lives?"</p><p>"Ain't nothing but a whore," Zoro groaned. A refrain to the Phoenix.</p><p>"Deserve all you get." Marco thrust in harder, Law's muscles contracting somehow proving theories of velocity and motion. Noises. Growls he knew enticed the two men, and, Marco was sure, signs of enjoyment. "Director's pet."</p><p>"Luffy wants to see him later," Zoro lifted his head from gazing at the suck and sip of Law's lips to glance at Marco.</p><p>"Of course."</p><p>Zoro thought Law was clinging on for dear life. He glared down again. "Could save fucking everyone—" And his cock slammed in and out of Law's mouth as he pulled those pierced ears—what kind of surgeon was he?—grasped his hair, "but not Ace." Nostrils flaring. Puffer fish cheeks billowing. Drooling.</p><p>"Not fucking Ace," Marco echoed. "What fucking good are you if you couldn't save Ace?"</p><p>They finished in him, and then on him, set him in the chair. His chair. The head surgeon's chair. Curled up on it. Covered in white. His shake was super sexy. He never lost it, but he'd slice you as soon as look at you if you ever dropped your guard.</p><p>"Touch yourself—"</p><p>"White monster—"</p><p>"Touch yourself and—"</p><p>"Come for us—"</p><p>Law gripped his cock and moved his hand up and down its length, hands which had recently made the most delicate incisions and fixed a man's heart, regulated the direction and flow of blood. Effectively gave him a new life.</p><p>Zoro tipped Law's head back and placed his mouth over the surgeon's as he jerked off. Not enough enthusiasm. Ah, it was always a pleasure to be met by his tongue.</p><p>He put their hands together over his cock, and was not gentle with either tongue or hand and Law almost arched out of the seat. With his ejaculation and the roughness of Zoro's hold and grappling for breath. Everything was warm. Zoro loved the breath on his lip, the heat dispelled from Law's body, despite being naked, the burn of humiliation.</p><p>He pulled away with a laugh. "You dirtied my hand."</p><p>"Dirty surgeon needs some discipline," Marco whispered from the patient's chair, the admin chair, the chair he so often occupied while consulting with the lead of the operating team. Law knew nothing was to be gained by looking at him, and stared at the carpet, trying to regulate his breathing.</p><p>Zoro ploughed a fist into Law's gut so he doubled over and he then pushed him to the ground, and put a foot on him so he stayed there. As disrespectful for him to look at Marco as not. He sat on the chair, mindful of emission.</p><p>It felt good to sit in the head surgeon's chair with a foot on his head, the irony wasn't lost on him. Law just lay there, like a dog waiting for a tummy rub. Zoro was loosely dressed. Law was butt naked. His scrubs neatly folded, thanks to Marco, on a chair near the door. Zoro pulled him up so he was over his lap.</p><p>Marco stood up and pulled down his zipper. "Spanking and blow job?"</p><p>"Sounds good to me. Would you like that Law?" Zoro asked, caressing Law's ear, rubbing his buttocks. He squirmed against him. Eager.</p><p>Marco walked over and held the surgeon's chin between his thumb and forefinger. "Chief?"</p><p>Law didn't think it was a good idea. But the shiny machines. The stethoscopes. The chances he'd been given. The fact that his visa was hardly valid.</p><p>"Be of service to my team." Luffy had said. The head of the hospital was both the hardest and easiest to please. His stamina was unbelievable. "My crew needs a surgeon and a whore."</p><p>"Yeah," Law answered Marco. A soft kiss to the finger that followed his jawline.</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>"Like it."</p><p>"Of course you do, pathetic excuse of a man."</p><p>Zoro warmed his butt with circular motions. It was red from Marco having fucked him. Law had a nice arse. He gave a squeeze, felt the flesh under his palm. Marco put his fingers in Law's lips and opened his mouth wide. Zoro guzzled a sip of beer from a can on Law's desk. Mahogany. A ring stained the wood.</p><p>"I might help you a bit, but I want you to do your job with enthusiasm, no matter how much your tush might sting. Capiche?"</p><p>Law was already grabbing for Marco, and nodded, and looked up at him with those eyes that just cried out to fuck him, even in the operating room, his mouth hanging open like a baby bird. One day they'd do it.</p><p>Marco helped place himself even as the first stinging blow added colour to Law's backside, and his eyelids fluttered, but he kept on track and had to cross his arms behind Marco's arse as he had with Zoro, his nose buried in dark pubes. The carpet did <em>not</em> match the drapes. His tongue was lush and deft and thorough.</p><p>Zoro was budoh trained. Law's legs kicked out as his flesh was whaled into. Every time he jerked forward, Zoro treating his skin like a timpani, Marco forced himself in a bit more, gave Law a little less control.</p><p>"Five, fucker."</p><p>"Six, fucker,"</p><p>"Seven, shitty fucking surgeon spankings." Zoro almost sang.</p><p>This was the part that Zoro liked more than anything else. Could imagine having Law as his own personal slave and finding that he wore his clothes strangely, or didn't polish his swords well enough, or that he buttoned his shirt too tightly or loosely—all spankable offences. He was such an arrogant fuck. It felt amazing, to hear tiny grunts of pain even while the doc's mouth was filled to the brim with cock.</p><p>Soon he was raining down the blows, and Marco had to take control, and Law was crying, choking and moving his legs far too much like some demon crab spawn. Zoro held them together with his flattened forearm, and Marco came into his throat in a warm gush. Zoro couldn't take it anymore. On Marco's signal, Marco lifting Law's hair a wee bit and ordering him first, not to spill a drop, and then, to clean him right up, Zoro sat him up before he'd properly digested god's seed.</p><p>By now the swordsman was definitely divested of his trousers again, or they were at half-mast—let only one of them in the room display their true skankish traits—and he draped Law's legs over his own thighs and grasped him around the chest so he faced the room, and drove his dick up into his already used and puffy hole. The cry—it was pain, Zoro could differentiate—was gratifying.</p><p>Marco had the camera out and the surgeon was so beautiful with his back curved, and his face smeared, and the staff were used to seeing him with bruises. His skin was dark. They blended in well. The tattoos hid the rest.</p><p>It wasn't the easiest to do, but Zoro had got himself into a rollicking kind of easy motion, enjoying seeing the surgeon flop up and down with no recourse, but Marco positioned himself in front of the chair and it was his turn to please Law now. "If you come, it means you want it, right, Law?"</p><p>Law just blanked, rising and falling, Zoro's cock going in and out of him. Zoro's teeth rupturing his skin.</p><p>"And that we have permission to do this to you—"</p><p>"Whenever, Law," Zoro growled. As if they didn't do that anyway.</p><p>"Luffy says we can," and Marco took his dick in his mouth, and had more control than Law had had. Marco's hands were over Law's thighs resting on Zoro's. He really went to work. Stimulated from either end, all that was needed was Luffy to come bursting through the door. Of course. Law's groan was a cat dragging its glands all over the tomcat laden night.</p><p>"Hey, no fair. You started on the slut without me. Or was it Law? Course it was. You sure are keen, Torao," Luffy said, and his pants were half lowered before anything could be said, Zoro pushing Law's neck forward, his head down.</p><p>"I knew it was a great idea to employ you." Luffy never made wrong decisions.</p><p>He shoved his cock deep inside Law's mouth, and the doctor winced. Luffy was the king of the hospital. It was his right. He didn't like to see that wince. He was the captain.</p><p>"I'm gonna join Zoro in the other end soon."</p><p>Man, it had been a long hard day, and he just wanted to get off and get off now, so screw Law's skill. He was just going to mouthfuck him raw. Zoro grunted, Law's hole stretched around him, and Marco felt him grow in his mouth. Dirty birdy. No way he'd ever be weak enough to let anyone do this to him, and Law sought it out.</p><p>True, hard to protest when your mouth was full of cock, but there were ways, and Law never found them.</p><p>"Or Marco, if Zoro needs a rest," Luffy said. Fuck, Law felt good sucking him off. "<em>Shishishishi</em>."</p><p>Law was such a good cum dumpster. He came as Zoro fired into him and Luffy spurted down his throat as if it was the fourth of fucking July. Law was already full of Marco and Zoro, and his insides had also been filled by the Phoenix from the other end. What was one fucking more?</p><p>Zoro rested behind him, holding Law's waist now, and Luffy held his hair, making Law look up, that gorgeous cum dripping out of his mouth, and Marco wiped his own mouth. Fucking sweet. Smashed Law's lips, ripping his gaze away from Luffy's direction, and fed his own cum to him. Marco pulled away with a modest little peck to the side of his mouth once he'd established the surgeon had taken it and swallowed.</p><p>"Thank you, Marco," he instructed.</p><p>"Thank you, Marco," Law replied.</p><p>"So he came. It's settled. He agrees to being the fucktoy for the floor," Marco said, stretching his back. These long shifts were killing him.</p><p>"That was the agreement anyway, wasn't it, head doctor?"</p><p>Law nodded, thinking of the machines, the medicine, the books, his very faulty visa. He'd slip out of Zoro's muscled grip if he thought he had any chance of getting away.</p><p>"How're feeling? Long shift yeah. You're gonna need some sleep soon." Marco knew Law had pulled an almost all-nighter the night before on top of this hell awful day. Had maybe grabbed a few minutes kip between surgeries.</p><p>"Not yet, though, Law." Luffy pulled him off Zoro. Marco was well out of the way. "We'll take care of you though." He slipped his hand between Law's cheeks, fingering his sloppy hole.</p><p>Zoro slipped from the seat and Luffy pushed Law so his arse was in the air, his face into the backrest, and his arms draped over the chair's arms. Everything was quivering and—</p><p>"Filthy, you're so filthy, Law."</p><p>Luffy looked at Zoro. "You up for it, bro?" He was giddy.</p><p>Zoro shook his head. "I'll help hold him. He gets antsy sometimes." Unjustifiably feisty.</p><p>"Marco?"</p><p>"That an order?"</p><p>Luffy nodded. He was strong and he practically fisted Law's opening. They needed access. Zoro held Law's head up a little so he wouldn't run out of breath too quickly in such an uncomfortable position.</p><p>"Looks like a fucking piece of furniture."</p><p>"Fucking furniture."</p><p>"Furniture to fuck." They laughed like running down the scores at a game, disparaging the players on the side. Zoro swigged another mouthful of beer.</p><p>Marco and Luffy lined up and Luffy was slightly ahead, because he always would be, but the friction of dick against dick, flesh against flesh all against Law's cavity was fucking delicious. For them. Law bellowed, and Zoro silenced it by driving his face into the chair back, Law slobbering all over the leather, his nose squashed, his body jerking forward, his fingers slipping from the back of the seat, even though they tried to seize the upholstery.</p><p>Fucking him with Marco reminded Luffy of competing with Kid for the biggest bonus. He always got it. Even though they were in different industries. Beat Kid by a hairsbreadth every time.</p><p>He wondered how Kid felt about him taking his bitch. He knew Law would go home with his daily progress report and receive more of the same, so, you know, it was something he was very used to, and looked forward too, Luffy was sure, if he was to be honest. Some folks were made to serve.</p><p>They always packed him off with the report when Killer collected him. Made Law write it, usually. Kid had to sign it.</p><p>Couldn't fucking save Ace. He couldn't save Ace. He thrust in harder and pulled Law's hair back and, with Zoro's help, deliberately shoved his face into the leather with each movement in and out. Marco did his best to keep Law's body stable.</p><p>"<em>Stopstopstop</em>."</p><p>Zoro laughed. The sound was muffled. They couldn't properly hear. Law's hands were clutching at air.</p><p>"Surgeon wants you to stop."</p><p>Luffy giggled. "That means go where he comes from, right?" He let go of Law's hair and pulled his butt cheeks wider. They were such a glorious hue. Even more gorgeous watching his and Marco's cocks move the skin, in and out, kinda like the ocean dragging sand out to sea. Rosy red. Zoro must have got the ladle to him. "Fucking foreign freeloaders."</p><p>He looked at Marco with a dare and both men fucked harder and deeper and Law could not help yowling his appreciation. Shachi pounded on the door, but Zoro told him to piss off. Luffy had the sense to have locked it behind him. Amazing.</p><p>"Beautiful piece of trash," Marco said, also enjoying the ride, viewing the tattoos, and his boss taking his other boss next to him. Couldn't dispute his skill, but it rankled him being a subordinate to Law. This made it worth it. "Gonna come, Law," Luffy warned. As if Law could do anything about it.</p><p>"Marco, you gotta come at the same time."</p><p>No-one argued with Luffy, even when it was impossible. Law felt himself filled up and up and up and every single nerve ending cried in agony. They'd cause a fucking prolapse if they weren't careful. And they were the furthest thing from careful.</p><p>Everyone let go as they came in Law and he curved like a parabola as the two pulled out of him, Luffy catching him under the stomach. He really cared for Torao.</p><p>"Okay, Marco, Zoro, out, but send in Vivi. Don't tell her Law's in here." He wheeled Law's chair to the desk, pulling Law along with him. Had to pull. He was all staggery and floppy like a scarecrow.</p><p>"Knees."</p><p>Law knelt. He'd hardly got a second of breath.</p><p>"Under the desk."</p><p>"Too fucking tall." He wiped his mouth and twisted his neck in the few seconds free from making up the syllables of someone else's world.</p><p>"Disobeying me?"</p><p>Law scrunched down. Luffy was impeccably dressed. On the top. His lower half was unzipped and he pushed Law's head into his lap. "Do your work."</p><p>Vivi knocked on the door.</p><p>"Luffy?"</p><p>"Vivi, just taking some care of business. Law needed to get some rest."</p><p>He shivered as Law ran a tongue along his cock, took one third of it in his mouth and sucked. Luffy ran bare feet along Law's own schlong.</p><p>"I'm a bit worried about Torao."</p><p>"Oh?"</p><p>"Seems he doesn't know how to say no."</p><p>Luffy cupped the back of Law's head with one hand, and pushed it onto his cock, and Law knew he had to keep his reactions silent, or lose his job. His scalp brushed the underside of the desk.</p><p>The king loved the way his employee was able to lick along the sides and to the end and each sensation was something new and thrilling, but for now, he was really just keeping his dick warm, and Luffy was doing the work.</p><p>"He has got a reputation," Vivi said.</p><p>"Being?"</p><p>"We call him the slutty surgeon." Vivi scribbled a few notes on her clipboard.</p><p>"He's good at his job though, right?"</p><p>"Which one?"</p><p>They both laughed.</p><p>Luffy knew for a fact that Law excelled at being a whore as he jerked up and came and filled him. He couldn't cough. He wasn't allowed to fucking cough, or pull off him until Luffy pulled out of him. His hands scrunched up Luffy's trousers. He looked pretty ridiculous all hunchbacked and bare under the desk. His desk.</p><p>"Let us know if he ever harasses you."</p><p>Luffy hoped he'd been sly. It'd spoil the fun if he hadn't.</p><p>"Of course," Vivi said. Law could be curt.</p><p>She left the office, and Luffy extracted himself and crawled under the desk. He wrapped himself around Law, kissing his face over and over. Sometimes he just needed touch.</p><p>"You didn't save Ace, Law."</p><p>Law nodded.</p><p>"You need to be punished."</p><p>Again.</p><p>"But you like that."</p><p>Again.</p><p>"On your back."</p><p>And Law did, in that tiny space.</p><p>"Legs wide."</p><p>Again.</p><p>"Your head's going to hit the back of the desk and you're not going to complain, or Zoro will spank you again. When's your next spanking due?"</p><p>"8pm tomorrow."</p><p>"If a surgery isn't scheduled?"</p><p>Law nodded.</p><p>"Yes. We make us a lot of money with those videos, Law, and you know if you weren't born in the sewers, this wouldn't happen, but you were, right?"</p><p>"Right."</p><p>Luffy eased into him.</p><p>"It can't be helped, right?"</p><p>"Right."</p><p>"Who do you love the best, Law?"</p><p>Law raised a hand to Luffy's head and dipped a wave of hair behind his ear. Luffy allowed it. Liked it.</p><p>"Luffy."</p><p>The director held his fake passport in a safe in his office.</p><p>"Who treats you the best?"</p><p>Law's head was regularly pounding into the struts. Luffy didn't like him scrunching up his eyes like that.</p><p>"You do."</p><p>"Whose kisses are the sweetest?"</p><p>"Yours."</p><p>Luffy leant down and kissed every line and grimace of his face, and was happy to hear and feel Law almost relax.</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>"Sunny-faced saviour."</p><p>"Damn right."</p><p>He'd come soon, and after he'd come, he'd debate whether to encourage Law to get off or let him sleep.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. working like a dog</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>Chapter 2: working like a dog</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>Killer was disappointed of course, hearing the report. Each day he hoped for better and each day Law let them down. They'd got Vivi to write it and Law had to read it out, over the desk, while Zoro caned him with a sharp metallic ruler over his crisp, smart, dress pants. Vivi taking notes on angle and reaction.</p><p>He had to read in a well-modulated tone or get punched the fuck all over the room, and the split lip and grazed face showed that had probably happened more than once. Zoro made sure he could feel the sting of the ruler through the thick serge.</p><p>"Law let Doctor Marco fuck him over the table after a high stakes operation." Law gripped the table as the ruler smashed down, and then on his fingers.</p><p>"Oi, take care of those, yoi," Marco said. He rested against the wall near the door, arms crossed. Couldn't have the head surgeon lose dexterity.</p><p>"Keep reading, bitch." Zoro bent over Law, into his back. "Do not stop, or you'll get more." He ran the ruler across Law's arse as if he were levelling cement. "You want more? Whore?"</p><p>Law swallowed. "No, Sir."</p><p>Zoro snickered. Law couldn't shake that accent, especially when he was stressed. "Then read." He slammed the ruler down. Law let out a sharp breath but continued.</p><p>"Lapped Zoro's crotch like a cat after cream, then let himself get reamed."</p><p>Zoro laughed and struck again.</p><p>"Tattoos are too enticing, Law. No-one can resist." He looked over at Killer. "Kid dig that? His cunt whoring all over town?"</p><p>"Didn't put up a fight when Marco sucked him off," Law read.</p><p>"Nah, you loved it." Zoro turned back, enjoyed adding the commentary. <em>Thwack</em> on the right, then the left, then the right again for good measure. Law drew in a very ragged breath.</p><p>"Nice angle," Vivi commented. "Good plump bit of jiggle on that flat no-arse booty." Zoro bent down, rubbed it, gave it a little kiss. Rascal smile shot Vivi's way.</p><p>"What do you think, Killer? Look at him with everything on show."</p><p>Law blinked and kept the paper in focus. Not Killer.</p><p>"Don't know what the boss sees in him."</p><p>"A hole's a hole," Zoro said.</p><p>Killer walked over and took the ruler from Zoro, tapped it a few times in his cupped palm so it made a noise, but didn't hurt. "Reffo." He lifted Law's head up by the hair. Law's expression was not expecting the best. "He's loyal to you, you know." He dropped Law's head.</p><p>"Allowed Director Luffy to mouthfuck him. Declared it was a privilege." Law sucked in air. Killer fucked him on orders but rarely out of desire. Zoro was a little more invested in keeping his derrière serviceable. Both Kid and Killer worked for Luffy on the side.</p><p>"Fuck."</p><p>"Keep reading." Killer jerked Law's head back again and a snake had more manners in the look he shot him. He let go and hit Law's flesh in a frenzy of outrage.</p><p>Law inhaled and read, voice shaking, stuttering. They'd got him a fake passport and i.d. when his surgical brilliance became apparent. That it might be even more desirable than his pretty mouth. But it sat in a safe in Luffy's office. The director reminded him a lot of somebody.</p><p>Shachi pounded on the door again. Vivi crossed the floor, opened it, blocking entrance. Marco turned his head.</p><p>"Boss. Law. You okay in there?"</p><p>Luffy sat in Law's seat, opposite to where he lay on the desk. Stared him in the eyes and jutted his chin to indicate he better give the right answer. And then continue reading.</p><p>"It's okay, Shach. Director's meeting." Law tried to keep his voice steady. "You guys head out if you're finished. I gotta catch up with Kid."</p><p>Shachi turned his cap in his hands. That worried him. They never saw Law since he'd taken up with Kid, and he looked more and more run down each time they ran across him. Patients wouldn't have confidence if those sores on the edge of his mouth spread.</p><p>Marco walked to the door, picked up his bag from the table nearby. "I'm through, Shachi. You know Law. Workaholic. Let's grab a cuppa before finishing up for the day. My treat."</p><p>Law felt Killer circle the ruler on his glute.</p><p>"Okay?"</p><p>"Just wanna..."</p><p>Marco closed the door behind him and the metal came down. Law jerked across the desk, but he didn't drop the paper. Didn't yell out. Shachi heard nothing.</p><p>"Not satisfied with being fucked by Marco and Zoro, and mouth fucked by Zoro and Luffy, oh, and Marco. Got a little spanking in there too. Our boy sure is kinky." Vivi liked to add her own embellishments.</p><p>"Oh, really?" Killer asked and separated Law's legs with his knee.</p><p>"Killer. No, I don't—"</p><p>Zoro tapped the paper. "Keep reading."</p><p>"This should be child's play then," Killer said. The ruler made everyone jump as the sound of it hitting the table reverberated through the room. "Ruining the nice clothes Kid buys you by acting up all the time."</p><p>Law's next exhalation was a staggered sob. Couldn't stop it.</p><p>"He's crying."</p><p>"Crying?" Vivi asked. Record. Took five spankings less to make him tear up yesterday.</p><p>"He's cute when he cries," Zoro said. Tapped the paper. "Don't let your blubbering get in the way of your articulation, dumpster."</p><p>Luffy laughed. Leant back.</p><p>"C'mon Torao. Get onto the good stuff."</p><p>The ruler had ripped the cloth of the trousers, but Killer wasn't going to stop. Let Law cop a hiding for wasting his master's generosity later. He had it coming. He grunted with every blow. Law's words choppy. Hardly able to get the sentences out.</p><p>"Let himself get DP'd by Luffy and Marco."</p><p>"Doubled up there," Luffy bragged. "It was a blast. Easier than I expected. Didn't even put up a fight."</p><p>"What?" Killer was furious and pushed Law's head so strongly into the table that he couldn't read.</p><p>"Get off me, you fuck," he growled.</p><p>"Yeah, Kil. He can't really read if you do that."</p><p>"Surely that's all?"</p><p>"We don't call him the corridor cunt for nothing," Vivi trilled. She pronounced her words so clearly.</p><p>He released Law's hair as Luffy directed him to. He was the top boss.</p><p>"You get to drive him home, Kil. You'll have your chance."</p><p>That was true. His hand hurt anyway. He hawked up a gob of spit and rubbed it into Law's hair. How Kid could love anything so disgusting was beyond him. He left the ruler next to Law's half-prone form and stalked to the back of the room.</p><p>"Eagerly complied to giving Director Luffy a blow job, on his knees, under the desk, while RN Nefertari discussed other matters."</p><p>"You never!" Vivi squealed, trotted across the room, and added her own few stinging blows to Law's backside, as if she hadn't taken the dictation.</p><p>"Yup," Luffy declared, arms behind his head. Shit-eating grin all over his face. "Fucked him under there too. He was nice and loose from the double!"</p><p>Still got a warm glow from Law telling him he was his sunshine. Or Torao. Was never a mistake to have employed him.</p><p>Killer groaned, arms along the back of a couch lining the wall. "Go on—you complete and utter tart—what was next?"</p><p>"He might've blacked out," Luffy said. "His head hit the table strut pretty hard a number of times." Shouted out too. Was why they'd brought the punishment forward.</p><p>"That was all."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. but when I get home to you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>Chapter 3: but when I get home to you</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>"Oi, oi. Zoro. Pineapple guy. C'mere."</p><p>"Marco, yoi."</p><p>"Yeah, yeah. Hurry."</p><p>Marco had seen Shachi out the of hospital after they had a cup of coffee, then doubled back inside.</p><p>Luffy showed them the phone. Propped it on a handy stand, put the audio on. The noises were foul.</p><p>A shock of black hair was bobbing between a pair of thick, muscled legs. All thigh under the tight blue cloth covering them. Law—sucking and humming, and letting out these little tweaks and groans like a summer heat on a still night. He was insatiable. Those tats identifiable. The net would lap it up. Killer lifted the mobile to his face, flushed red.</p><p>"Fuck, the bitch is so good." He ran a hand through Law's hair almost fondly.</p><p>"He protested a bit, but reminded him about the visa and the authorities, and hoo boy, he really knows how to go to town."</p><p>"<em>Shishishi</em>, that's great, Killer. Make sure you add it to the report card you gotta give Kid."</p><p>"Sure thing." He groaned sat back in his seat and arched his back. Law's tatted arm reached up for leverage, Killer clasped his own palm over it. "Gonna need two hands, boss." And ended the call.</p><p>"Chose option B, huh?" Marco asked. Law's mouth was probably cleaner than his arsehole at this point.</p><p>"Easier for him to kneel than lie on his back at the moment," Zoro said. "Compassionate, really."</p><p>"I'm sure Kid will have something to say, but yeah, Law's hole would be pretty skanky. Option A's not so good when it's sloppy seconds." Option A was to pull over after the intersection of fifth street and eighth avenue, recline the passenger seat way back, and fuck Law raw. Pictures required.</p><p>"Amen," Zoro said, and lifted his third after-work can of beer. Marco and Luffy responded in kind. "We're always lucky to get him first."</p>
<hr/><p>Law wasn't seeing any kind of reality except the darkest by the time Killer pulled up to Kid's house. His club. He shared it with his gang, and dragged the hardly conscious doctor from the car.</p><p>"Gotta work tomorrow, Killer," he mumbled.</p><p>He had a schedule.</p><p>"A-yup. Luffy sent your times through. There's a window for repentance, to reflect on how and why you keep getting yourself into these situations where all anyone wants to do is open your legs wide and ride you."</p><p>Law stared ahead.</p><p>"Aren't you disgusted at yourself?"</p><p>Yeah, that pretty much summed it up.</p><p>Kid opened the door and stood over the two of them. "Get your fucking gas-bagging shitholes into the house."</p><p>The door led to the kitchen, and in the small recess, Kid pulled Law forward, and pulled his wallet from his pocket, one hand cupping his balls sitting so nicely in those snug dress pants. Wait, was that a tear? He fingered that too, made it slightly wider.</p><p>He felt no guilt then selecting all the bills bar one and slipped the cash into his own pocket. He bought all of Law's clothes.</p><p>"Hear you've been cheating on me again."</p><p>Law turned his head away, but Kid moved in.</p><p>"Every day you're the town bike. Incredible surgeon but you can't stop yourself from putting out."</p><p>"Luffy's got my—"</p><p>Kid driver-piled him and Law doubled over. Common posture. Kid pushed him down further, and Law knew to drop to his knees.</p><p>Killer kicked him under the chin as he walked past, groceries in hand. Law's head flew back. He tilted it down, circled it, cricked it to the side.</p><p>"Fucking excuses, cunt," Kid said. "We let you White Spots into the country, give you a nice job. Me, I'm a respectable boyfriend, and all you can do is cheat on me?"</p><p>Luffy had selected Law for Kid. "Still allowed to see others?" he'd asked at the time.</p><p>"You? Of course. Especially in front of him. But him. No way. Every time someone else so much as looks at him he's failed you."</p><p>Kid liked being the punisher. He'd cracked his knuckles.</p>
<hr/><p>"Get to it."</p><p>Law didn't know if his jaw could open.</p><p>"I said," he grabbed Law around the throat and pushed his head against the wall, "get to it." Law didn't have his glare. He was in blank paper, glossy stare land. Kid dropped his hand and Law leant forward and lowered Kid's pants and took his cock with a practiced touch. It jerked to life almost straight away.</p><p>Kid cradled Law's chin fondly. Law looked up, all dark night enticement, sucking and purring away.</p><p>Killer wandered in eating a bowl of noodles. "Got that meeting soon, and he might need a rest if we want to use him to sweeten the deal."</p><p>Law's gut clenched.</p><p>"Might wanna help him get you there, boss."</p><p>Kid grunted, and thought that wasn't a bad idea. He pushed Law's head and back against the wall, cock still inside his mouth.</p><p>"Don't move, and don't fucking choke." He pinched Law's nose for fun and the doc couldn't help but spasm, hands going to Kid's in a useless gesture of appeal. He released his grip with a laugh.</p><p>The wall failed to knock Law out as Kid's cock drove him into it, but it very nearly did. He braced himself against the plaster, and like so many other times that night, Law had to wrap two arms around Kid's legs or fall. It was over quickly though, and Kid slowed so Law could swallow and clean him up.</p><p>He did with an efficiency that Kid both admired and that made his blood boil. Why'd he get left with the tramp? Law then dropped to all fours, panting, once Kid finished. They always went too far, Kid thought, that StraWhite crew, but Law shouldn't sleep around.</p><p>He dragged Law up from the back of his fluffy jacket—kinda matched his own—like he was a kitten grabbed from the scruff of its neck, squatted and hoisted him off the ground, up against his body, and slung him over his shoulder, giving a playful pat his on his arse, Law inhaling in pain. He wasn't a lightweight. Tall thing. But Kid's job in border security was manhandling and he was good at it. He still wore his uniform, creases ironed into the short sleeves of his button-down.</p><p>"Got quite the strapping for being naughty, boss. Might be a bit tender."</p><p>"Oh?" Kid raised an eyebrow and slammed a hand down hard on his butt. Law's cry had tears at the edges.</p><p>He walked them to their room, circling the tush of his bounty, and threw him on the bed. He didn't move but he usually couldn't by this stage of the night. Kid pulled his pants down, kept his on. Leant over him, kissed his beard.</p><p>"Who do you love, Law?"</p><p>Law sighed. Not one of enamourment.</p><p>"Law." Kid's huge hand was around his neck.</p><p>"You, Kid."</p><p>"Sure got a funny way of showing it," Kid said, unscrewing the cap to lube they kept on the bedside table and unceremoniously shoved his fingers into Law's already bruised anus.</p><p>Crying. Why did he always get the crying Law? Done and crying. There was no expression in it. Luffy said he was a perk of the job, so Kid didn't spend too much time worrying about it. He angled himself over Law and went for it and even if it was like fucking a dead body, Law was warm, he was a hole, and it was enough to make him come. Especially considering what a sexy motherfucker the doc was, his stomach muscles rippling—spasming?—under his patterned palm. He should cover up. He was Kid's and Kid's alone.</p><p>He wiped any leftover ejaculate, probably from the others as well as him, with one of Law's own beri bills. Shoved it along his crack like toilet paper, Law absentmindedly shifting his body so the action was more effective like a child helping his mother after he'd shit his nappy.</p><p>Kid scrunched the note up, straightened it out, leant across to the bedstand where Law's wallet rested, and slid it back in.</p><p>"First directive for tomorrow is to buy your coffee with that. With a person." Wasn't getting out of it by using a vending machine.</p><p>Law nodded tiredly. His legs were wide and his penis flopped, his scrotum was swollen. Kid liked him on display like a broodmare. He started thumbing his dick.</p><p>"You want some too? You wanna get off too, slut? Show me." Law pushed into Kid with the very little energy he had. Stethoscopes. Machines. Surgery. The noose.</p><p>"Haha, knew it."</p><p>Kid lay himself over Law and rubbed back and forth against him. "What more can you do to earn my money?"</p><p>"My money."</p><p>Kid covered his mouth with his own. Bit his lip. "You don't pay rent. You cheat on me all the time. I fully support you, Law." The shit was getting hard under his hand. "My money. You've earnt this crap. Nothing more. Are they still trading in beads in that vile backwater you come from?" Law didn't even properly pay rent because he didn't properly exist.</p><p>A phone buzzed.  Kid fished Law's mobile from his pocket, his trousers at the end of the bed, and continued to lie over the cunt and jerk him off.</p><p>He glanced at the screen. Shachi? Hadn't Kid forbidden Law to have contact with him? He'd have to delete his contacts again. Block them.</p><p>"Yo, what's up?"</p><p>Shachi wanted to know where the boss was and if he was all right. Kid let him answer for himself. Some boss. Law shakily held the phone to his ear while Kid grabbed his cock and pumped it, running a thumb over the eye. The forearm of his other arm was virtually flattened against Law's throat.</p><p>"So fucking hard," Kid sang.</p><p>"Shach?" Law's voice was thick with exhaustion and the humiliating pleasure that furrowed his body. And the fact he could hardly breathe.</p><p>"Law, what's hard?" Shachi's words carried. Worried.</p><p>Law gulped a few breaths as Kid's fingers practically pulled his cock off his body and he pressed his arm deeper into his throat.</p><p>"Help-ng Kid —wi' probl'm." He was too tired to grip the sheets but his hand moved uselessly on the cotton in protest.</p><p>"Your boss is the problem, Shachi. Hear that?" Kid grunted out.</p><p>"Boss? Should we come around?"</p><p>Law's breath was choked and fast. Couldn't answer. Kid's hand moved up to his face and gripped his jaw.</p><p>"Don't hang up."</p><p>Law didn't.</p><p>"You're so close. Let Shachi know how much you're enjoying it."</p><p>Law could see the corner of the ceiling clearly. A spider tracking across it. He groaned with all the passion of a conveyor belt shuddering into action.</p><p>"Atta boy." Kid didn't care how perfunctory the sounds were. So long as there was noise. He plucked the phone from Law's hand, the doc able to breathe now. "Or I go after 'em. Pay a visit to the higher ups." Kid's employers.</p><p>Law didn't really register. His crew were brawlers, but Kid had no mercy, and he worked illegally for Luffy. So did his team, legally, except for him. The balance was delicate.</p><p>"Say my name."</p><p>Kid held the phone near his hand working up and down Law's prick from the testes to the tip. Law trembled without pretense as Kid's fingers curled under his balls, and gave a light squeeze.</p><p>"<em>Kid</em>." The vowel dragged.</p><p>"Boss? You're jerking off?" The sound was repulsive. "You dirty dog. You're working too many hours."</p><p>Kid glared at Law and he threw his head back and spat out a never ending  curse as he came—semen spurting over the sheets, Kid's hand and the phone. Kid didn't care. He picked it up.</p><p>"Your boss just came over your face, fucktard," he said and hung up, threw the phone to the bed. He pushed his hand under Law's white work shirt and rubbed the cum over it. "Ambrosia."</p><p>A knock on the open door. "Chief, the boys are here."</p><p>Killer stood in the corridor. Felt like spitting on that putz all over again as he lay straddled under Kid's bulking form. He had muscle, so how did he let himself get so easily used? Heard he'd been in the back of a freezer truck with a dozen other corpses. Served themselves right, but sometimes he wasn't sure if Law was then living or the dead.</p><p>"Right." Kid pulled himself up, zipped everything up, sat on the side of the bed. "Guess the surgeon needs some rest."</p><p>He squeezed a thigh behind him. Pulled another beri bill from his own pocket. Law's money. Leant back and snapped it in front of Law's face a few times, laughing at the flinch, and put it back into the wallet.</p><p>"What're paying him for?" Killer mumbled as they walked from the room.</p>
<hr/><p>Law heard the rumble of business and drinking down the corridor and turned his head on the pillow. He didn't think. He couldn't think. He'd go mad if he thought. He sat up with a struggle. Picked up his trousers from the bed, his boxers from the floor, and walked to the bathroom to assess the damage. Luckily Kid had an en suite. He'd been through worse, he told himself.</p><p>When?</p><p>He'd been through worse.</p><p>Showering and patching himself up was no easy task, but he'd done it before. Washing everything away—albeit in his abuser's home—was a small mercy. He was allowed some money if he was good, was a good fuck. Kid usually picked his clothes out, but Law had a few pieces he'd chosen on the trips to the mall they'd had together. Always under Kid's watchful eye. The loose track pants were one of them, and he pulled an equally loose t-shirt over that. He rubbed at the back of his neck. Still wet. He wiped a towel along it.</p><p>He sat at the corner desk, a cushion on the chair. Fired up the laptop to check the specs for tomorrow's operation and to take and make notes. Sent a text of apology to Shachi and powered down the phone, though it lit to life when he plugged it in to recharge.</p><p>Life and death was in his hands and it'd be death if he couldn't will the shake out of them. He eyed the clock. It was nearing 8pm, Luffy's usual cut off for abuse, depending on the schedule. Oh, Kid would want to cuddle him, and he might find himself filled with cock during the night. Probably justified after reading his daily report. But it was easy entitled sex that left Law functional.</p><p>He opened the page, read the deets. Nothing else mattered. He had what he wanted.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Just remember that this story is hopefully totally implausible. Law is also the ultimate survivor. Shout out to babyboyisak's story <a href="veofourown.org/works/22025422">Snippets from the worst month of Law’s life</a> for the scene where Kid blocks Law's nostril.</p><p>He'll get away. He always does.</p><p>Guest kudos are as anon as I am. Thanks for clicking on the fic if you got this far. It's pretty unpopular going by the kudos/hit ratio, so remember to download yourself a copy if you like it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. I'm counting your heads/ as I'm making the beds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ace</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Law escaped Flevance as an adult. Some characters are aged up in this. Ages are vague and not canon, but I imagine Luffy would have to be at least mid-twenties to be able to have the power he appears to in this AU. Zoro would need to be about the same age or a bit older, and Ace, older than both, but younger than Law.</p><p>The bad guys are OOC, okay? Cos in canon they're not bad guys, and they're only bad guys for the purpose of this fic. Law too, really. His sass is just beaten down at the moment.</p><p>No warnings apply for this chapter.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter 4</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong> I'm counting your heads/ as I'm making the beds</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>Law lined up pens, three in a row across the desk, and then the same three in a row on the other side. He wasn't sure on which side they looked best. Should the one with a green casing be on the inside or outside? Should they be arranged according to length?</p><p>He scattered them across the desk and picked out the red one (again) and aligned it with the edge of the desk (again). Then the green, and the black last. He looked around for that ruler Zoro always used, measuring precisely.</p><p>He wasn't sure why he was measuring, but the longest pen was six centimetres, and the shortest four point seven, and currently they were indented seven centimetres from the left and four centimetres from the top of the desk. He'd need a tape measure or something to calculate the distance from him. Or he could mark dashes with the ruler, but it wouldn't do to deface the desk.</p><p>Zoro's beer left water stains, his own coffee too at times. He should be more careful about those. Bicarb paste lifted them. Never enough time to mix it.</p><p>Had he ever copped a hiding for skewed pens? Probably not. If they remained perfectly ordered like little regimented soldiers, nobody could get mad, right?</p><p>Law glanced up, not raising his head, as the door opened. Ace let himself in, locked the door behind him. Law returned to his task. Ace was a new one. They called him Fire Fist after an accident on the hospital grounds. Locking the door wasn't a good sign. He sat in a chair to the right of the table, one knee bent flat over the other, long, baggy shorts flaring. All speckled warmth and saturated sun.</p><p>Ace was quiet when he wanted to be. Neither of the brothers ever knocked. They had keys. There was a third one. Long gone. Childhood trouble. Explained some of Luffy's strange happy-go-lucky narcissism.</p>
<hr/><hr/><p>Ace knew they tried not to bruise Law's fingers, but his knuckles were mulberry as if he'd punched something, someone? Zoro? The surgeon wasn't going to acknowledge him.</p><p>He'd rearranged those three pens fivefold in the time it had taken Ace to cross the floor and flop into the seat. He looked around the room. He'd been there on the odd occasion. The light was enough for him to distinguish the splotchy bruises, but not their extent. Blinds blocked the late afternoon glare.</p><p>Ace helped with security and landscaping, and witnessed Law's arrival most mornings—stepping from Killer's car without thanks. A flipped finger from either man wasn't unusual. Sometimes Law's own crew picked him up from Kid's and they went in together.</p><p>If the driver was Killer, Law closed the car door briskly, ordered a coffee from the van on the edges of the parking lot, balancing his workbag—a briefcase kind of a thing—under his arm. Took his first sips in the early morning light, rolled his neck and shoulders—man, he always looked tired—repositioned his bag and entered the building. Ignoring Ace.</p><p>Engaging with Luffy's family and friends and not engaging with them was a minefield.</p><p>Sometimes he didn't have money for the coffee. Ace couldn't imagine why. As he snipped bushes, or tied back vines, a soft string of curses floated on the air as Law promised later payment.</p><p>On Ace's morning break, the coffee van staff complained how the well-off always skimped on ponying up. But, watching Law arrange and rearrange the pens now, Ace knew there was more to it. His brother always went too far.</p><p>Sometimes the doctor had a beri note or two that looked like they'd been picked up off the toilet floor. On those days Killer videoed the transaction for some reason. Law was stony-faced usually, but discomfort scratched at his skin like the wool jacket gramps had tried to get Ace to wear for special occasions when he was a kid.</p><p>His apology was a low murmur, and his palm brushed from under his chin to the side of his neck as if trying to wipe his skin from his frame. Once the transaction was complete, the server glaring with disgust, Killer clamping Law's shoulder and Law shrugging it off, he'd storm into the hospital. Ace wasn't sure he even drank the coffee.</p><p>If it was a day that Killer just dropped him off, Law took a shot of his ID card in the building's sensor, one of the door opening, and another of walking into work. Waiting for the lift, Ace saw him send the pictures, he guessed, before shoving the phone hard into his pocket so he could better balance his coffee and bag. Glancing at his watch, he rode the elevator to his floor. Who'd he send them to? Parole officer? Immigration official?</p><p>He was a sharp dresser. In the morning he generally wore a smart white dress shirt, like the other doctors. Sleeves rolled up, though he'd cover his tattoos for some patients. He wore an undershirt like a lot of the guys who'd crossed the border, as if they lived a few decades in the past. Soaked up the sweat though. Caused it too. Maybe it hid the tatts more? Some story there.</p><p>The collar was loosely open, showing just the tips of the one on his chest. Luffy had described it. He was neat, put together, competent, capable—the backbone of the operating staff, in the theatre and out of it.</p><p>At the start of the day.</p><p>Now, in his office, afternoon bleeding into evening, he picked up one pen, replaced it with another, and then the other. Once he'd sorted this, he'd be able to start on his work.</p><p>Now it wasn't just his collar that was loose; his shirt was completely unbuttoned, one button missing. The necktie he sometimes wore, normally in a casual half-Windsor, was knotted to the arm of his chair in some complicated binding. His vest was untucked, scrunched and crumpled over the waistband of his pants, tucked in at the back. Lopsided. Sloppy. Unravelled.</p><p>Hair a mess, lips puffy, eyes swollen and red as if he'd sneezed up a storm, he sat on the edge of his chair, not daring to look at Ace, Ace could tell. But at the same time, his concentration was on Ace. And the pens.</p><p>"They're fine," he said.</p><p>Law paused. Put the pen down. The ruler. Were they straight enough? Eyes turning to the side, but body facing straight ahead. Facing the door. Not looking at all collected enough to deal with any patient seeking consultation. Luffy had locked it. Ace had too.</p><p>Law fisted his hands on his thighs, sat upright. Waited. He tipped his head down. Dried blood on his vest. Maybe he should button his shirt.</p>
<hr/><p>Luffy had rescued Ace from a fire that ate up the rickety wood and planks of the shed he used to grow seedlings in for the grounds, and to nap in. It was stupid, but he'd gathered some leaves, lit them. The smell of the burning foliage on the crisp winter air was comforting.</p><p>He'd popped back into the shed to return the rake. Fallen asleep. Damn narcolepsy. Had lit the fire too close to the building. A sudden wind blew through. The place was aflame in a flash.</p><p>They'd grown up together from age ten and seven onwards. Not true brothers, but joined in adventure, and hardship. Another brother was run down by a car driving on the wrong side of the road. Didn't survive. The driver wasn't drunk. But he came from somewhere else. Had only been in the country a few days.</p>
<hr/><p>"Relax," Ace said.</p><p>Law stiffened. He eyed the pens. If he got the right combination he'd start his work and work soothed him. All was right in his world when he could work.</p><p>Ace drew up his legs and sat cross-legged. Rested into the back of the seat. Flicked at the beads around his neck.</p><p>Was it code? Why would one brother be different from the other? Should he stand and settle himself between the gardener's legs? Ace's legs? If Killer and the others found him, what would happen? Law looked at the pens. The muscle below his eye twitched. <em>Relax. Relax slut</em>. A rough hand behind his head.</p><p>"It's not right, Law." The doctor did not lose any tenseness at all. Sat like a child waiting to be excused from the table. Or chastised. Waiting for the strap. "My brother. I can't cross him. Saved my life. But they don't listen to me anyway. Got no pull."</p><p>Ace had quit school at fifteen, and he liked his job, but wasn't the director of a hospital with connections to the official and illegal paths of government. "After Sabo died—"</p><p>Law figured that was the brother.</p><p>"Same Luffy, but changed. Young and stupid enough to believe the words of gossips and Gramps' friends." The old men in the marines.</p><p>Law dared to turn and sneak a glance at Ace. There was hierarchy in his own country. It wasn't a foreign concept, and Law's family was lucky enough to have been in the higher brackets, but people and families mixed and mingled regardless, and the white lead disease that lay their land low affected them all.</p><p>His father and mother—Law's own research—discovered that the deaths of the workers and miners and the town's inhabitants was the price of progress. The poison was passed down from one afflicted generation to the next. It crossed class barriers, but wasn't a contagion. Corporations lined their pockets while the stomach linings of the inhabitants of Flevance haemorrhaged, unsightly white blotches stained their skin. Law's sister had died before the soldiers tore up the land.</p><p>Techniques in mining advanced, but the owners couldn't convince the workers to go underground once they'd learnt about the lethality of the metals extracted. Eradication of the populous was easier for the multi-nationals than to start again elsewhere. Easier to spread rumours and declare the land a blank slate after a terrible plague. The infrastructure was in place. Would've been a terrible waste to dismantle it.</p><p>His parents developed a cure. Law was their guinea pig. Their only son. Their only living child. But he was of age and had volunteered. Day by day his own spots faded after being injected with the antidote. He worked hard alongside them with the sick of the town. The original injection was reinforced with oral medicine.</p><p>The clinic listed all three Trafalgars as practitioners, but was named after Lami. Townspeople, unsure of their claims that the disease was not infectious, viewed the family—who seemed to gain strength rather than lose it—with suspicion. Were they the vectors spreading the sickness?</p><p>They'd been so close to releasing the antidote. Law still knew how to make it.</p><p>Some escaped. Law didn't know if they'd made it. Without the antidote, they probably hadn't. When he'd set out in the refrigerated van—it wasn't meant to be refrigerated—many of his companions were sick, but were alive. Half way through the jostling, bumpy journey the temperature dipped, then dropped again, then fell some more.</p><p>They hit and clawed the walls of the truck to get the driver's attention, but the vehicles were built to conceal and muffle sound. The cargo—Law and his country people—couldn't open the door. Freezing was a kinder death than some. People crawled into one another's arms for warmth.</p><p>Travelling too light for a vehicle full of meat, tyres too buoyant, the truck was suspicious. Border control opened the back at a checkpoint. Kid. Kid had opened the doors. Had found Law trying to help someone.</p><p>Law had murmured in a foggy haze about being a doctor and Kid had heard it all before, but not from a half-frozen tattooed pierced refugee who screamed sex on legs. They could make good use of him. Surely Luffy had a place for him if his story checked out.</p><p>Law felt lucky he'd survived, even now. He'd find a way out of his living hell, once he'd learnt everything, made connections—but ninety percent of his thoughts not dedicated to the patients, surgery and technique, were lulled by the warmth he'd felt in the freezer as hypothermia settled in. And here was Ace. Freezing to death sure looked good.</p><p>The brother stood. Law dropped his head, forced his shoulders down, hands still fisted on his trousers. They'd used him today, but second servings weren't unheard of. Three surgeries scheduled tomorrow. Two small, one complicated. He needed to complete them. Had needed to comply with Luffy and his affiliates so he could do his job, do what he loved. Ace was an affiliate, right?</p><p>He eyed the scalpel near the pens. It should be in its sterilised pack, but Roronoa had wanted to play role reversal doctors and nurses. God forbid if he ever operated on a patient. Sadistic fuck.</p><p>Law let out a breath, and moved his scrunched fingers slightly, before tightening them again.</p><p>Ace flopped into the chair opposite Law's desk. He'd seen him aid the nurses with patients who were all brawn and brawl, and he was capable of subduing them. He wasn't weak, but if Law left, he was one illegal immigrant in a system with a hard-on for persecution. Of him in particular. Or indifference. Maybe it amounted to the same thing.</p><p>Official sources claimed that, for the greater good, everyone had been wiped out in Flevance. The plague was neutralised. New settlers moved in. Safe mining operations were adopted. No-one was corrected with the fact that Amber Lead was <em>not</em> a contagion. The area was booming.</p><p>It would be so easy to send the community into a witch hunt if Kid or Luffy reported the disappearance of a highly contagious queue jumper.</p><p>Ace tipped up his hat. He should've taken it off inside. Forgot he was wearing it.</p><p>"My mother walked to the hospital to give birth. We didn't have a car and lived on the outskirts of town. They'll tell you that everyone's the same in this country. There's peace, there's harmony, there's elegantis, <em>egalitar</em>, equal shit. But there's an underclass, and we were it."</p><p>If it had been Lami, Bepo, Shachi, Penguin. <em>Egalitarianism</em>. Law remained silent.</p><p>"She held on, Dad said she was always telling me to hold on, but she was more than due. I was ready to come out!" Ace laughed. A soft sound.</p><p>"Government policy was to take the babies and place them in homes where life was better." If Law hadn't been studying the floor, he would've seen Ace's air quotes. "And maybe it was. You can't have an underclass without keeping 'em that way, and the way to do that is to make them believe it. Inside job."</p><p>Marx 101. Marx wasn't going to help him too much in this situation, Law thought. Where was the catch to the words, the story? What did he have to listen carefully to in order to demonstrate he'd been paying attention? That he understood this language that wasn't his mother tongue? But it was the language of medicine. They'd read and spoken it often in the Trafalgar home. It was the language of their schools. He switched interchangeably.</p><p>"Teachers expect you <em>not</em> to come to class, to attend. Your parents. You don't want to 'cos kids say you've got bugs. You get blamed for petty shit even though you were home that day, sick with a cough." Ace shrugged. Officer Smoker seemed to visit their home ten times a day, despite Garp's interest.</p><p>They'd send a cop if he hadn't finished a task correctly at his part time job. Never sent a cop after the kid that spat at him. Sent a cop if he retaliated. There was the curfew. A curfew just for them. Luffy, Sabo. They didn't have to comply. They didn't have it easy either, but there was no curfew.</p><p>"She walked, my mother. The clinic was more than fifteen kilometres away, and she walked. More than nine months pregnant. She'd been hiding the pregnancy from the government men, but couldn't hold on any longer."</p><p>Law tucked in his vest, buttoned his shirt. He wasn't sure if it was worth it, or if Ace would take it as a come-on, but Law knew he'd feel more together if he could hide those drops of blood. It wouldn't do to have the patients witness them.</p><p>It was difficult slipping the buttons into the eyelets. Despite Luffy, Marco, whoever, urging Zoro not to bring that ruler over his fingers, he always got in one or two strikes.</p><p>"I didn't know her," Ace said. Leant forward, elbows on his knees, and fists under his chin, watching Law fumble. "They wouldn't admit her. Turned her away."</p><p>Law gave up for a beat. Picked up his phone from the desk. Checked to see if there was a message from Kid. He had to reply to those straight away, but he was listening. Despite it. Couldn't help himself.</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>Ace looked across. "Mhhm? Why what?"</p><p>Law shrank. <em>Shuddup stupid surgeon. Don't speak unless you're fucking spoken to</em>. But wasn't Ace speaking to him?<em> It's a fucking trap.</em></p><p>Ace regretted asking when he observed the quickening and shallowing of Law's breath in response to the question.</p><p>"Why'd they turn her away?" Ace asked.</p><p>Tiny nod.</p><p>Ace looked down at his arm, tanned from his outdoor work.</p><p>"Dad was with her. He was larger than life. Loud, gregarious, drunk. She wasn't, but he was. He wasn't the one who was pregnant."</p><p>Law resumed trying to fix his buttons. Slowly. Wasn't much he could do against Ace if he acted, any of them. But observation was worth something.</p><p>Ace hadn't been there, so he carried a different kind of survivor's guilt. The kind that kills your mother. His father had it in a different form. "Gave birth in the bush on some scrappy old tarpaulin dragged from out of the dust. Complications. Infection. She wouldn't go back, they would've refused admittance again or asked why she hadn't come earlier."</p><p>Law sat with his bruised hands cupped on his lap. Thought of the necktie on the chair. Kid would want to make sure he hadn't lost that. Seemed rude to try and loosen it now.</p><p>"I knew her for a few days." Ace had told the story before. Knew he wouldn't get a response from Law. Not yet. Saw him check his phone again, turn and pick at the tie knotted on the chair's arm, but his hands weren't steady. "Not that I can remember."</p><p>He let out an exhalation, rose and crossed the room so he stood next to Law. The guy froze. Ace thought he'd done well to be as calm as he had, but a tremor ran up the inclined curve of his neck. He took Law's hand where it bothered the knot, and it sat in his own, a deadweight awaiting instruction. What was it required to pull, to feel, to do?</p><p>"It's alright." He placed it back on Law's lap like a bird with a broken wing. Guessed Law didn't know why he was loosening the tie. "Really. I'll just free it for you. Your hands are cut up. Luffy goes too far."</p><p>And the surgeon looked directly at him for the first time, and if his stare had not been flooded with fear, he knew it would be firing with anger. He knew.</p><p>He unfastened the tie.</p><p>"Kid want you wearing it, or not?"</p><p>Law did not know how to form words. Ace was too close.</p><p>"If I wear it, they come back—" Law cupped the back of his neck, and then his wrists, loosely. Mouth grim. Voice low. Ace hadn't heard him speak much louder than a few decibels in the time he'd known him.</p><p>Ace nodded. He placed it on the table to the left of Law. Folded. Nice tie. Sky-blue gloss.</p><p>He left the room and failed to lock the door behind him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I've got one more chapter for this written. I don't know if it will expand beyond that. But there you are, part of the back story. Oh, my medical experience is nil, and it probably shows. Sorry.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. so I'm taking the mister/ from out in front of your name/</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ace 2</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>No warnings.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter five:</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>so I'm taking the mister/ from out in front of your name/</strong>
</p><hr/><p>Ace dropped in regularly, after a session, if there was time before Killer was due, or if Law was given a tiny reprieve and allowed to hang out with his own crew. Shachi, Penguin and Bepo warmed to him. Luffy put the unlocked door down to his own forgetfulness or Ace's carelessness. It wasn't left unfastened too often because it was a punishable offence.</p><p>Law had his own key. Whether he had the agency to use it or not was another thing. He had to respond to patients. It was a mindfuck and Luffy knew it.</p><p>"You get enough sunlight?" Ace had asked one afternoon, Law's pens neatly lined up on the desk, and the surgeon composed. It hadn't been that way when he'd first let himself in.</p><p>"Hardly," Law said. He'd started to rely on Ace's visits. Not a good thing. The guy had picked him up off the floor more than once. Helped him bathe and dress. Tended to cuts and grazes. Like now.</p><p>"Careful," Law winced as he dabbed ointment into a burn on his arm from a tight grip.</p><p>"Sorry." Ace pulled back. He thought he had a light touch.</p><p>Law shook his head. "Kid'll wonder who's patching me up."</p><p>"Ah." Ace resumed dabbing. "Marco helps yeah?"</p><p>Law drew his hand in, took the jar and applicator from Ace. His hands were steadier now. He was a goddamn doctor, after all.</p><p>"In a hospital, not out of the realms of imagination that someone might treat me." He flashed a dark smile Ace's way. Rare. He didn't see it that often. "Just can't figure what I've done wrong from one day to the next."</p><p>Fucking nothing. They both knew it.</p><p>"Show you the new plot I've planted out?" Ace asked.</p><p>There was nothing Law wanted more. He drew his attention from the scrape and glanced at his ordered desk. He'd already scanned the notes for the next day's prep. A break would be nice.</p><hr/><p>Because Ace was Luffy's brother, they got away with it. Sitting on one of the many benches around the garden, Ace bought the coffee if Law had no money. In the doctor's room, he showed Law a hidden compartment under his own desk. A tray slid out. The surprise that lit Law's face, the possibility that edged his eyes, was a real treat.</p><p>"Love Luff, but I gotta keep my secrets. I ordered these desks in. Dunno, y'know. Sometimes they take your identity from you, sometimes they don't let you have one. Sometimes you just gotta keep important stuff hidden."</p><p>He pulled 10,000 beri in 1000 beri bills from his wallet and slipped it into the compartment.</p><p>"It's too much," Law said. Overall, it wasn't that much—the price of four meals at a moderately priced restaurant—but Ace's salary was on the lower side of things.</p><p>"You'll pay me back someday."</p><p>Law nodded, he would. He'd still have to use those skanky notes to buy his coffee when Kid ordered, and they wouldn't help his embarrassment when Kid had raided his wallet, but he could repay the staff quickly, or join his own crew for a drink without worrying if he had enough to cover his part of the bill.</p><p>Law pressed the tray back in without removing the cash.</p><hr/>
<hr/><p>The surgeries for the following few days had been cancelled for one reason or another, so Law's training had been particularly cruel and the duration too fucking long.</p><p>Barbarity was worn like a nosegay, spry at the waist. Pretty to sniff at, to display and discard once it served its purpose. Thought was put into its execution, but not a whole lot into its intent, except some broad stroke survival of the fittest bullshit that wobbled between raving mad and one hundred percent entitled. War crimes passed off as whimsy.</p><p>When Ace let himself in, Law hadn't been able to clean or dress himself, and struggled to get off the floor. He'd backed himself up to the wall and rested against it, multi-hued, and so done and nothing he said made any sense. His face was a mess. Some day his ink wouldn't be distinguishable from the bruises.</p><p>Ace rubbed down his arms with towels like cooling a horse after a race. Lucky it was a hospital. They were always on hand. This worked for some reason. It calmed him. Another towel covered his crotch, the doc practically pinning it in place. That calmed him more.</p><p>Law didn't know how Ace managed to look at him, and not fuck or reject him outright. Didn't know how he stood to hold conversation with him, week in, week out, when he saw him like this. He didn't always come, but Law knew he'd grown dependent on sighting him, at least, on a daily basis. It was dangerous.</p><p>In the morning, once Killer had pulled away, they shared a few words, but admin took note of the times when he entered the building, so not many.</p><p>"Go easy on him," Ace had asked Luffy.</p><p>Luffy tilted his head like a small bird zoning in on a worm. "Why?"</p><p>What about Sabo was the underlying question.</p><p>"Years ago, Luff. Law had nothing to do with it."</p><p>"Don't need them. We don't need outsiders." Luffy flicked his thumb a few times on the side of his nose.</p><p>Sabo, Luffy and Ace came from different backgrounds, but they were all born on the same land.</p><p>"It'll make him stronger," Luffy said. "I need a strong crew."</p><p>"You'll kill him."</p><p>Luffy shrugged. "Then he's not strong enough." Zoro had explained it to him once.</p><p>"He's the best surgeon you've got. People seek him out." Ace lay on the long couch in Luffy's office. It was perfect for naps.</p><p>His brother nodded. That was a valid point. "That's why we've got the schedule. No freeloading."</p><p>Being the best surgeon wasn't enough, especially when Law took jobs away from good friends like Marco.</p><hr/><p>Law <em>was</em> able to walk, but kept close to Ace. He wasn't all that steady. The general nurses and staff were fed stories about Law's brilliance, and volatility, and guessed he'd had to be brought back into line again. They wondered how the easygoing Marco, and cheery Luffy were able to work alongside him.</p><p>The sun was nice once the two got outside. Ace steered them to a bench. He was feeling a bit tired too, but not at the same level of exhaustion Law exhibited.</p><p>"That your work?" Law asked. Really couldn't sit up straight too well, and Ace didn't mind him leaning into him like some consumption-wracked heroine. His arms were crossed to keep him warm, despite the sun, and he'd shrugged into his jacket as a double precaution, the furry neck kept in the heat.</p><p>"Yeah." Ace pulled Law upright and close. He knew he needed sleep, and it was okay if his head dropped onto his shoulder. Law let him manhandle him. If Ace did claim the rank of affiliate and family, Law wouldn't have been able to stop him, but they had a friendship, and Law's voice was heard.</p><p>Ace gestured to the small shrubs that flowered at different times of the year so that the garden was generally in bloom in one section or the other. It was healing, and Law always noticed the buds before they were fully in flower. His work.</p><p>It didn't take long, and they'd both agreed that Law leave his phone unmuted so Ace could wake him if needed. Sleeping in the light, Law reconnected with less harmful elements of the world, if only for a few minutes.</p><hr/><p>He woke to the cold. That was unusual. Dusk was settling in. Ace was heavy besides him. That was worrying.</p><p>"Ace-ya?" Law's words and tongue were thick. Ace was the heavier sleeper, but he usually kept watch when they came out here. Never stayed for much more than half an hour. Law looked at his phone. Fuck. Three hours. How many appointments, calls and check-ins had he missed?</p><p>"Ace?" He shook the guy. He knew how bad his narcolepsy got, but he was lifeless. Law's motor skills weren't great at this moment, and he was cold, but he put his fingers to Ace's neck and couldn't feel a pulse. Tried to stem the tremble that affected them and made it difficult to determine.</p><p>Sometimes pulses were hard to locate.</p><p>He took his wrist. Couldn't feel anything.</p><p>His actual heart? He struggled to sit upright and to keep Ace upright.</p><p>He applied a light touch to the neck again. He was so damn clumsy. Moved his fingers a little. There. Faint. A faint beat. Relief.</p><p>Shaking because he was brutalised, because it was cold, because what the fuck had happened to Ace? he called Luffy. He only ever called to self-report, or if the three of them had dreamt up some task and phoning in was required.</p><p>"Torao! We've been looking for you."</p><p>Law bet. Kid and Killer too?</p><p>"Luffy. It's Ace."</p><hr/><p>Marco determined abdominal swelling. Law was the best man for this, but they thought he'd have a few days off theatre duties, so Zoro had trod on his fingers. Not enough to break, but enough to make it difficult to hold things firmly and with precision. Like scalpels.</p><p>Marco brought the x-rays and his hypothesis to Law, and Law, pushing his glasses down his nose, ignored the thrum along his cheek bone from swelling, and held the x-rays at distance and agreed. They'd taken blood to determine any loss of the same or infection. Marco needed to lead the team, even though Law was the best, and even though they'd seen Law overcome a smackdown time and again, tonight wasn't the night.</p><p>As he held the x-rays Marco observed them flutter, a little, not constantly, but it was there. Doc was scared? Not usual. The surgery was his domain. They really should go easy on him sometimes. But, why had he been in the garden anyway? How had he even had the strength to get there after the drubbing they'd given him? And if Ace had been in distress, surely Law would have known. Why hadn't he got them earlier?</p><p>Sleeping. He'd been sleeping. He slept through it.</p><p>A weak intestine wall allowed in bacteria, an infection, and ruptured. It was sudden. The rupture. The lead up might have taken some time. Surely Law had witnessed it. Surely Ace had tried to wake Law.</p><p>Marco cut flesh and organs and worked towards patching things up and not cutting the wrong innards, and towards halting the leak of fluids that led to sepsis and to not losing blood.</p><p>Law paced.</p><p>Zoro, Vivi, Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo worked in unison. As used to working with Marco as with Law.</p><p>Luffy paced.</p><p>They couldn't save him.</p><p>If there was one person on earth—other than Luffy—who wished with all his heart for Ace to stay alive, it was Law.</p><p>But he couldn't save him.</p><p>Luffy's tears were expected. Law's a surprise. Marco and Ace had been an item of burning attraction, but Law?</p><p>Probably fear. Could save anyone from the brink of death and beyond, but not Ace. What good was he if he couldn't save the one person who'd shown him kindness, who'd gone out of his way for him?</p><p>Born into nature in the worst circumstances—his father half-sober—and departing in the outdoors, his incompetent friend by his side, the spaces in between Ace's life had been worth something.</p><p>Law hoped Ace's non-existence carried more weight than his existence had. That his mother waited.</p><p>Fire fist wasn't the only one hospitalised that night.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Cos' it's a mister like you / that put's the rest of us to shame</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>rehabilitation</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings: implied/referenced abuse, but not graphic. Adult themes.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter six: </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Cos it's a mister like you / that put's the rest of us to shame</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>Killer couldn't get that fucking camera out of his face. The staff of the van hated him with a passion now. Who didn't? Only his crew had any space for him. And the smarmy-faced cheer of the operating and hospital staff when they knew they had to rely on him to get the job done, and knew that <em>he knew</em> he'd pay for his efficiency later, had him on edge all the time.</p><p>Law inhaled and handed over the beri note Kid had wiped his crack with the night before. Semen was better than shit, he supposed. Sometimes it was saliva, perspiration. Just depended on how much Kid wanted to drive home the fact he was a whore first, surgeon second. Human was so far down the phyla that it didn't even apply.</p><p>The van staff snapped on clear plastic gloves as soon as he exited the car nowadays. He didn't blame them. They had to take the money or give him the coffee for free. One day they'd post a sign: No White Spots. It wouldn't surprise him. What would Kid and Killer do then?</p><p>The woman serving poured too much coffee, and it spilled onto his hands as he took the cup. He shook his fingers with an intake of air, but thanked her and walked away. Killer shut down the video. "Well done, Trafalgar."</p><p>Law shot him the bird, and though he'd trained himself not to look for Ace by the door, his smile lessening the sting of those stupid transactions, his absence barrelled like the curl of a wave, rushing him with the thrum and drag of salt over sand. The women in the van were right to hate him.</p><p>He was resilient, he knew it, but had been bedridden for a week after Ace's death. If they'd left him alone, he might've been on his feet quicker, but Luffy blamed no other, Zoro followed his lead, and it was convenient for Marco.</p><p>Bepo took to parking himself in the room on the nights he wasn't working shift, and for some reason, Luffy wouldn't cross him.</p><p>The evening of the funeral was a blur of pain and static. Luffy had invited Kid to brainstorm what could be done to make sure that Torao knew he'd failed them. Failed Ace. That made sure Torao recognised the errors of his ways—his waywardness. Kid was keen.</p><p>Fortunately for Law they still needed his skill. Marco intervened, in spite of his jealousy and his own grief. There were some procedures, he had to admit, that he'd just never mastered.</p><p>The nurses, including Zoro and Vivi, had all adored Ace, so when the edict went out that physical attacks were no longer acceptable, they turned verbal. Or inedible. Some of the shit that got served up as food made him gag even now.</p><p>Advice was still sought, with a clipped courteousness, on procedures though, when needed.</p>
<hr/><p>"Got horses on it, Boss."</p><p>Law rested back in the pillows, overbed table across his front, a stallion prancing in a paddock on the front of the jigsaw box atop of it.</p><p>"Puzzles like these," and Penguin ripped the plastic off, threw it in the bin, "help prevent Alzheimer's. Help motor skills." He opened the box and propped the top with the design up against Law's mug. "Got ya' doing physio?"</p><p>Law shook his head. Unless being tipped out of bed and freezing in the baggy pyjamas his crew had brought in for him, while hospital staff changed the sheets, counted for anything. He tried not to give away that he <em>needed</em> to slouch against the doorframe, and tried to glare as well as he could at the architraves and skirting boards, so they'd leave him alone until it was time to crawl under the covers again.</p><p>"That sucks."</p><p>Law sorted through the box, looking for the corners.</p><p>Penguin, Shachi and Bepo's visas were a fraction more valid than Law's. They'd left Flevance to study abroad before the country had fallen, gained employment—but not permanent residency. Agencies had granted them bridging visas when it was apparent they'd face persecution if they returned home, but it was dependent on their employer's recommendations and reports. Law wouldn't let them endanger their statuses by helping him.</p><p>They'd sought him out when he'd started working. Asking if he knew what had happened to the areas they stemmed from and, though it hurt, they appreciated that he let them know of fires that gutted towns, and the guns that had peppered them. And the antidote.</p><p>Flevance attracted outsiders. It was a thriving and pretty city before the population fell ill. All three of their families had emigrated for a better life, and picked up work on the docks, or as bookkeepers, or in the schools. They didn't have close proximity to amber lead, and Shachi, Penguin and Bepo had been born away from the town, so they were some of the few not afflicted by the poison. Knowing there had been an antidote, that their families had been healthy but slaughtered anyway, was a continual burn.</p><p>Law smiled at Penguin, hovering at the side of the bed, and placed the first corner on the table's surface. Penguin sorted through the pieces with his pinky and located another. By the time his shift began, they had all four corners, the basic frame, and had started to fill the horse's face and a flank. A field of flowers in the bottom lefthand corner, easy to locate due to clear definition, had been completed.</p><p>"Gotta go, Law."</p><p>Law nodded, caught up in the task. Once he got fixated on something he got fixated. Penguin knew.</p><p>"Thanks, Pen," he said, trying to fit two mismatched segments together before discarding one. Penguin quickly glanced around the room to make sure the water was full, the buzzer functional, not that Law used it, and his boss was as comfortable as could be.</p>
<hr/><p>He fell asleep with a segment in hand. It slipped back onto the table top. Three quarters of the puzzle was completed, and he hoped Penguin had a chance to pop back in to finish it together.</p><p> A shove to his shoulder woke him. He'd been drooling, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then on his shirt top. Vivi. He looked at her from under his brow.</p><p>Most of the regular nurses didn't want to deal with him. Luffy wanted Vivi to take charge of Law's basic recovery. A tray of bland sat on the overbed. A plastic wrapped roll, of course. Sandwiches as well. A bit of salad with a squirt of dressing. Thank god his fucking crew fed him. She'd placed it on the jigsaw. The pattern was slightly ruptured, but basically maintained its shape.</p><p>He straightened and reached for the orange juice, but she picked up the tray, and dragged it across the puzzle so it scattered across the bed. "Oh, but that's right. You're allergic, Doctor Trafalgar? To bread? You won't eat it anyway." She placed the tray on a ledge near the window. It was amazing he had a room with a window. "Right?"</p><p>Law's lip lifted in a sneer, and he concentrated on picking the parts of the puzzle he could see from the folds of the coverlet. Vivi did Luffy's bidding.</p><p>She looked over his file, scribbled information about lunch eaten or not. "Someone sneaking you food? You know your recuperation requires dietary restrictions."</p><p>"Let's call it an involuntary hunger strike." He spoke to the small mound of jigsaw he'd gathered on the table.</p><p>"You will eat the bread?" She put the sandwich, back on the board, displacing a few more pieces, and the ones Law had collected. Insubordination wasn't received well. Ace had been dead for less than a week.</p><p>"Make your mind up." Law would pick out the filling. He'd eat that. He eyed the orange juice on the windowsill.</p><p>Vivi picked up the jigsaw cover from where it had fallen to the floor.</p><p>"Horses? Didn't think you were the type, Doctor." And she tipped the cover and slid the remaining bits of puzzle into it. "Either way, it's time to set the table, so we have to clear it."</p><p>Law helped. At least he'd be able to save a few bits from going astray. Vivi pushed his hand back.</p><p>"Don't exert yourself. Focus on getting your strength back. Eat up."</p><p>Law released his hand, opened the plastic, and picked out the soggy tomato filling and chewed, staring at Vivi. How long had it been sitting in the kitchen before it got dispensed?</p><p>Zoro knocked on the door and Law paused mid bite. Sat up taller in the pillows. Vivi shrieked with the acting skills of a three year old, and the jigsaw went flying.</p><p>"So sorry, Doctor Trafalgar!" She knelt to collect the pieces, looked across at Zoro. "Help me, you big oaf. Scared me."</p><p>Zoro sauntered into the room and as they located the parts he squashed every third one, gaze on Law, daring him to speak.</p><p>Vivi selected five. "Some fresh air needed, right, Doctor? You're always complaining about not getting enough." Wasn't he out getting some air the night Ace died?</p><p>She walked to the window, opened it outwards. "Oh." One jigsaw segment after the other fell to the garden, or got caught in a gutter, or was captured and brushed up in a gust of wind.</p><p>"Bitch," Law said below his breath. Crinkled the plastic the sandwich was wrapped in.</p><p>"Huh?" Zoro asked, picking up a handful of jigsaw and crushing it.</p><p>"You're no fucking better." Law spoke to the tattoos on the back of his hands. Getting fucked up was inevitable.</p><p>A knuckle sandwich probably was the better option than the bread Zoro made sure he chewed and swallowed, palms flat against his cheeks, definitely amused by Law's weird-coloured eyes promising impalement. That wasn't violence, right? Nurses were trained to restrain agitated patients. The later crew dealt with the stomach pains. But anything could cause that. Anxiety alone was a good breeding ground for ulcers.</p><p>Law wished he'd taken a picture of the progress to show Penguin. His thoughtfulness was not taken lightly. And the puzzle was valuable. The crew was lonely, too. Their families gone. Piece by piece, the activity whiled away the time when they were on call or had long shifts. A half-finished one usually sat on the table of the common room. All medical staff took a second or two to add to it.</p>
<hr/><p>"I'm sorry, Pen."</p><p>Law lay on his stomach on the floor of the room, trying to dig something out from under the bed. He sat back against the bed once he'd retrieved it, and Penguin sat beside him. Law brushed dust from his arm, and held out a segment of jigsaw. Looked like a bit of grass. Penguin touched Law's face for a second. Examined the light swelling. The bruising that coloured it after the funeral had subsided. And they were pretty clever with that. Patients got scared if he looked too beat up. "Bread?"</p><p>Law rubbed at his tattoo and looked away. "Lunch was sandwiches."</p><p>Penguin took the part, stood and offered Law a hand up. There was no way he willingly put bread in his mouth.</p><p>Law thought of slapping assistance away, but he needed it. His friend grabbed him from his elbow and along the forearm, and he was steady. They'd make a toilet stop before the end of his visit too.</p><p>Law sat on the edge of the bed, swung his legs up, and Penguin helped pull the covers towards him. His crew were a bunch of babas.</p><p>Penguin looked at the sill where the flattened boxes sat. Zoro had accidentally trod on them after knocking them to the ground. The few salvaged bits of jigsaw were shoved into a plastic bag.</p><p>"Don't bring any more. They'll only screw 'em up," Law said, held his stomach and grimaced for an instant and belched a foul gust of air, but relaxed. Dropped his hand. Penguin flapped his in front of his face, nose wrinkled.</p><p>The thing that killed the crew more than anything else was the acceptance, the expectation that shit would happen. It made them want to both protect and attack.</p><p>And man, if anyone had the right to tears it was Law, but he shut everything off. Had to, to function. Not always. His grief was vocal after Ace's death. And only a rock wouldn't cry out in the pain and humiliation he went through.</p><p>But this petty shit—not letting him finish the puzzle, giving him an allowance like a kid, governing every step and gesture…it scared Pen sometimes that Law's face was so damn calm. This would be what broke him.</p><p>He tried to reshape the cardboard into some kind of receptacle. The horse's face was obscured by a shoe print.</p><p>"It's fucked, Pen. They fucked it up. I'll replace it. Next time I get some money." Don't. Don't bring your nice things, your touches of domestic life in here. Law had no place in it.</p><p>Penguin gave up and sat on the side of the bed, his hands fists, and his neck thick and strained with anger.</p><p>Law smiled at him. "Had done about two-thirds. Almost done. Wanted to show you, and they didn't screw me up. There's that." His fingers formed a small frame. "Had this much to go. Would've finished, but fell asleep."</p><p>Penguin's hand gripped the cover near Law's thigh, and he didn't know if he could speak.</p><p>"Wanted to finish together." Law fished around in the top pocket of his pyjamas. "For you, open your hand."</p><p>Penguin did. Law placed the four corners of the jigsaw into his palm. "The cornerstones," he said, his and his friend's heads almost touching. He turned each of the pieces over—the brown of the earth, green of grass, blue of sky, and red of a flower. "Me, you, Shachi and Bepo."</p><p>Penguin closed his hand over Law's.</p><p>"Not much use without the rest."</p><p>"The rest isn't much use without them," Law said, leaning back, tired grin, hand loose. "The touchstones for everything."</p><p>"Let's not exaggerate." Penguin pulled out his wallet and slid them into a compartment. "Touchstones for two things, maybe three." But he knew a child's delight and search for the corner pieces, the strategy in it.</p><p>"Like constellations."</p><p>Law was getting poetic. Must be hungry. "Need food, Cap?"</p><p>His head inclined minutely. "Get some fish? Eustass will drop in later. Wanna be as manky as possible." Plus, they all knew he loved fish.</p><p>"You little mank, not little minx?"</p><p>"Manky minx." Penguin smiled along with the malice spitfiring Law's eyes. Small, small compromised victories.</p><p>"I'll ask Ikkaku to season with extra garlic."</p><p>Law laughed. "That's the way." Ikkaku was a great girl. Helped them all out when she could. Used to have a penpal in Flevance.</p><p>Penguin didn't like it, but garlic was good for Law's immune system, and if it kept the circling vampires away, all the better.</p>
<hr/>
<hr/><p>When he returned to his office one morning after an operation, basically healed, hoping to grab a few minutes rest, he didn't have to put his key in the lock.</p><p>A really bad fucking sign.</p><p>It was too early, but if Luffy had free time, he didn't always care that Law didn't.</p><p>Here went nothing.</p><p>He opened the door. Ready or fucking not. To the smell of...cigars? None of them smoked. Bepo. Only Bepo on occasion, and not cigars, and not in the building proper.</p><p>"It's a hospital. Whaddya doing?" Annoyance overrode prudence. Bravado repelled a whole lot of malintent. He strode across the carpet and, with a dismissive flick of his hand, indicated the cigars the huge axe-handle-shoulders cop was smoking. Looked like a cop, anyway. Acted like one. Sitting opposite Law's desk like he owned the joint.</p><p>He looked up, turned them in his mouth, leant over and put the fucking things out on the grain. Law groaned. Was he immigration? Gonna take him in? What was going on ?</p><p>"Who gave you a key?"</p><p>Law walked around him, kept his distance, placed his files on the desk, and pulled out his chair. Looked around for his mug.</p><p>"Friend wanted me to check up on you."</p><p>The cop dangled a key chain with an orange circle around the key head. Law looked up. The key to his office?</p><p>"Ace?" He sat. Orange equalled Ace.</p><p>The guy, grey-haired, tough face, but not old, picked up his cigars and rammed them back in his mouth, unlit. He held the key in his palm, fingers over it.</p><p>"You want me to keep this, or give it to you?"</p><p>"Office key?"</p><p>Smoker nodded. "Or should I return it to Luffy?"</p><p>Law blanched.</p><p>"Yup. Ace said that wasn't a good idea."</p><p>"Who are you?"</p><p>The guy took in the room. Nicely furnished. That desk was pricey, though Ace was good at wangling a bargain. Opulent couch, lots of books. He could tell there was an attempt at calm and order in the room—look at those pens, the ruler so exact to their side—but a mildewed-creep lay just below.</p><p>He'd been at the scenes of more fucked-up shit than he cared to remember, and this room reeked of nightmare.</p><p>"You illegal, kid?"</p><p>Law's lips thinned.</p><p>"Doctor." Surgeon.</p><p>"Don't look a day over twenty-five."</p><p>He wasn't far wrong.</p><p>"What they got on you?"</p><p>He'd had to get Ace out of strange situations at times. Luffy held the town together, coordinating the crews of city factions in an uneasy balance, but that meant dealing with the above board and the underground.</p><p>Law thought again of getting a coffee—hadn't had a chance to pick one up that morning. Pulled his wallet from his back pocket and checked the contents. Kid had cleared it out.</p><p>They went together to the ATM to withdraw how much Kid thought Law might need and was allowed for a week. How much he was entitled to by Kid and Luffy's estimation. Luffy let Zoro and Marco deal with financial aspects after giving them a rundown. Then Kid kept a very uneven tally from day to day as he stripped his wallet bare, restocked it, restored it only with a few notes he wouldn't want a sewer rat to gnaw on, and then blamed Law for the accounting discrepancies.</p><p>Law tossed the wallet on the desk.</p><p>"Show me your I.D."</p><p>"Who are you?"</p><p>"You gonna call Luffy? Ask him for help with the intruder in your office?"</p><p>Law glared.</p><p>The cop adjusted in the seat. Sat back. "Get him to kick some ass? Or how about Roronoa Zoro, Marco the Phoenix? They'd assist, right?"</p><p>Law sighed. It was too fucking early in the day. Kid must have sent him. Didn't explain the key. But.</p><p>"What do you want? Blow job? Table's always a good surface to fuck me on. Hand job? Legs over your shoulders? What're you here for?" He checked his watch. "Surgery's scheduled in an hour. I haven't eaten, and gotta scrub up. Make it fast, haven't got time for kinky shit, and don't fuck with your fists."</p><p>The guy straightened, surprised. Blinked. "Come again?"</p><p>"I gotta use my hands, so you beat me up, there's less chance I'll be able to."</p><p>The cop chomped the cigars harder.</p><p>Law rolled up one of the sleeves of his shirt, paying attention to the process, then the other. He'd had an elderly patient that morning and the tattoos on his fingers were enough to send her into apoplexy. He glanced at the cop.</p><p>"Kid didn't send you?"</p><p>"Eustass Kid?"</p><p>Law nodded. "I'm his whore." Face blank, Law rearranged the cuffs so they were even. "He's in the perfect position to pick and choose who hustles for him."</p><p>"Border control?"</p><p>Law stood, walked to a corner of the room and tipped the cold third of his leftover coffee from the day before—the week?— into the sink. Turned on the tap, rinsed the dregs down, then threw the take-away cup in the bin. Where was his mug? Braced himself with a deep breath. Business as usual. He hooked a finger in the collar of his shirt. Too tight. Felt so tight.</p><p>"Lock the door. You've got a key, right? Thought Ace gave it to you. But probably Kid or Luffy." Last thing he needed was for everyone to join in. No way did he want to set a new precedent.</p><p>The cop shook his head. "Easy there. I don't wanna fuck you." Though the cop definitely considered it. Nothing for nothing, right? Maybe another time.</p><p>Law stared at him, fingers on the door handle, his own key ready to tumble the lock.</p><p>"Ace did give me the key."</p><p>Ace didn't send him to fuck him, surely, Law thought. He couldn't handle that.</p><p>"Sit down." The cop jerked his hand in the direction of Law's chair. "Smoker. Name's Smoker. Used to keep an eye on Ace when he was younger."</p><p>Law removed his grip, hesitated, and walked to his desk. He sat and rearranged the pens, a ringing in his ears, but this guy's words were important. He tried to clear his head.</p><p>"The kid hated it. I understood it. Had Garp breathing down his neck on one side. Things Luffy or Sabo got away with he couldn't. His dad had done some time for GBH, and his people always got put inside more than others for pulling the exact same kinda shit."</p><p>The name was familiar. Law tried to remember.</p><p>"Ace thought I was picking on him. And I kinda was, but if it wasn't me it would've been that mad dog, Akainu, wanting to bring him in for any old thing, always raving that he shouldn't have been born."</p><p>Law was confused. "Akainu?"</p><p>"Head of police."</p><p>Smoker sent the key across the table, but Law didn't take it. Not just yet. He had his own.</p><p>"Ace was a good kid and I wanted to make sure he didn't slip through the cracks. He didn't give me details about you, but he got low at times and said if anything happened to him, I needed to check on you."</p><p>Law reached across, picked up the key and turned it in his palm, the metal warm from Smoker's hold. "Ace was sick?"</p><p>The cop shook his head. "Not that I know. There was a lot of shit he couldn't change. Gets anyone down."</p><p>"He mentioned you." Law pushed the key back across the surface. "Take this. I've got my own. If anything happens to me, it'd be good for an outsider to have access, and Ace's friend, an uninvested friend, could maybe retain or report a little of what I was—"</p><p>He waved at the books, a newspaper clipping on a corkboard of him shaking a patient's hand, an innocuous pastel that Luffy had picked out. He didn't hate it because they'd asked him his favourite colour, so he'd told them the opposite, and they'd selected it in shades that he at least liked because they thought he wouldn't.</p><p>The flash of colour was a life rope when it smudged into his periphery—head yanked back, mouth full of Luffy or Marco or Zoro, breathing hardly an option.</p><p>There was so little else to him in the room because—</p><p>"I.D.?"</p><p>"Luffy's got it."</p><p>"Illegal?"</p><p>"Gonna arrest me?"</p><p>"Be better if I did?"</p><p>Law shook his head. Knowing this system, Luffy or Kid would contest the arrest and he'd be released into their custody.</p><p>Smoker withdrew his cigars, spat into a handkerchief, then resumed chewing their ends. The kid looked miserable.</p><p>"They fuck you?"</p><p>"Whore wasn't hypothetical."</p><p>Smoker's expression didn't change, but hell those gangs were hot-headed. Here they had fucking gold in their hands and they were determined to alchemize it into pyrite. Ace had sung Law's skills, and he'd done his own research. He was good.</p><p>"What's the payoff?"</p><p>"Get to stay here. Get to practice medicine."</p><p>"Alternative?"</p><p>A peaceful life. He'd have one. Not yet, but he'd have one.</p><p>"Got friends?"</p><p>"A few."</p><p>Smoker returned the key.</p><p>"Got somewhere you can hide that?"</p><p>Law nodded.</p><p>"I've got a copy," Smoker said.</p><p>Law raised his eyes, looked over in bruised wariness.</p><p>"Give it to a friend. Work on a plan. Ace said he had something in place."</p><p>Law looked up harder. Brows scrunched. "He did?"</p><p>"I wanted to ask you what it was."</p><p>Law's shoulders rose and fell. Fucked if he knew. "Guess he meant to tell me, but didn't find the chance." It wasn't like any of them were expecting Ace to die.</p><p>Smoker had been at the funeral. Platitudes were given to Fire Fist at the service, but at the wake Luffy and others ranted about the incompetence of the outsider, the blow-in, the foreign surgeon. If he'd only done his job properly, his brother would be alive.</p><p>Smoker's blood boiled, but he'd looked at the crowd, and tried to find the tattooed man Ace had talked about with a laidback smile and hint of concern, but he was nowhere to be seen.</p><p>He'd asked Luffy about him, the absent surgeon, and the kid snapped that he was no friend of Ace's, and the doctor had fallen ill and been hospitalised. He was the screw-up who'd killed Ace.</p><p>The stare, deep and shadowed, sent chills down Smoker's spine, and Ace hadn't told him the connection between this guy and Luffy, but he understood there was reason to worry.</p><p>He'd checked out the hospital records, they were available for the police, and the operating surgeon had been Marco. He checked the cause of death, and only a miracle could have brought Ace back. The rupture went a long time unnoticed.</p><p>That was the issue.</p><p>Also, Law apparently <em>was</em> some kind of miracle worker.</p><p>That was the issue.</p><p>The argument went that if Law had operated, Ace would still be alive. If he'd noticed Ace's condition earlier.</p><p>"Why couldn't he operate?" Smoker had asked Luffy.</p><p>"Fingers were no good."</p><p>"Hmm?"</p><p>"Zoro trod on them. Didn't think he'd have surgery that day."</p><p>Human trafficking was a huge problem in the area, and corruption seeped into so many levels of society, but Smoker tried to battle it where he saw it. Luckily some of the higher ups, like Kuzan, liked him, and kept Akainu—Sakazuki—off his back.</p><p>"He's a freeloader." Luffy had turned his back on him as platter after platter piled up on the table. A feast fit to see off a king.</p>
<hr/><p>"Got a good memory, kid?"</p><p>Law nodded. Smoker rattled off his phone number. Law repeated it a few times.</p><p>"Ace wouldn't want to see you trapped."</p><p>Law ran his fingers on the desk.</p><p>Smoker rose and pushed his seat back. Lit the cigars before leaving the room.</p><p>"See you 'round. You find out what Ace was up to, let me know."</p><p>Once the door closed, Law wrote the number on a scrap of paper and slipped it into the hidden compartment without opening it more than a millimetre or so.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Smo-yan. </p><p>This country has a quick turnaround for funerals, like some in the world where it's tradition for the body to be buried or cremated within a couple of days of death.</p><p>FYI: There’s a few subscriptions to this, and that’s fine, I have one too (so I can make sure it updates correctly). However, I haven’t received any email notifications on it. I think it’s because it’s in the anonymous collection. They work as bookmarks, anyway, but I don’t think notifications go out.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. before you accuse me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>smoke alarms and sprinklers</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter seven: before you accuse me</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>"They won't let him treat them."</p><p>Luffy sat at a meeting with Zoro, Marco and Vivi. The Heart crew attended too. It was kind of sweet. They called themselves that because Trafalgar's specialty was hearts, but Luffy suspected the swirly designs that patterned Law's body might have something to do with it.</p><p>"They think he caused Ace's death."</p><p>Luffy sat on the window sill. He liked twisting about in the director's chair at the head of the table, but he could overlook the whole city from the window—the lights winding down the hill against the grey sky, taller buildings in the distance. Made him feel free.</p><p>"He did."</p><p>The three Hearts shot looks at one another. It didn't go unnoticed.</p><p>"They're suspicious Because of amber lead," Bepo said. "He looks worse by the day." He unconsciously touched the side of his lips. Law's were always cracked, often a small tear at the hinges.</p><p>Thanks to you. Penguin's glare.</p><p>"They think he's contagious."</p><p>"It's not contagious," Luffy said, "He doesn't even have it."</p><p>"Losing money, Boss," Marco pushed across some statistics to the middle of the table. As if Luffy could be bothered to even look at them.</p><p>"Some staff won't deal with him," Vivi added.</p>
<hr/><p>It was unusual that his own crew was in attendance. The women from the van were there. Law's face coloured.  Beri notes in a specimen bag sat on the table.</p><p>Zoro tapped the seat beside him, but Law ignored him and sat next to Bepo. A raised brow indicated that the tomfuckery would be remedied some time in the near future, most likely at the end of a very sharp ruler. Zoro grunted and readjusted himself in the leather seat, eyes on Law.</p><p>The Hearts couldn't do much. They had relatives in the White City that they assumed had perished. They hadn't heard anything from them for the longest of times. But with lazy stares and puffed out chests and caps jammed low over their faces they unconsciously barricaded Law from threat as much as they could.</p><p>Penguin and Shachi's muscle was hidden under the weird tattoos that folks from the region had. Hard men, but no-one was tougher than Luffy.</p><p>The hospital's benevolence allowed them to work while still holding bridging visas. Otherwise they'd find themselves deported, stateless, or detained.</p><p>"You're infectious, Law," Marco said.</p><p>Law shook his head. What were his men doing here? "Only with whatever the fuck STD you've passed on." It was amazing his white blood cell count came back at normal range whenever he got tested. Which was often. They played Russian roulette with their health as much as they did with his own.</p><p>Would've got him a rap over the knuckles if he'd sat next to Zoro.</p><p>The woman from the van pulled her neck in with a hiss like a goose ready to strike. Who had passed on <em>what </em>to whom?</p><p>"Maybe not infectious, but you're encouraging infection." Marco held the specimen bag with callipers and read from a sheaf of papers in front of him. "Staff were concerned when you brought these in one after another. And don't deny it, we have videos, proof."</p><p>"Fuck." Law's throat constricted like the snare around a cormorant's neck, preventing it from swallowing its catch when it fished the rivers for its master.</p><p>Zoro aimed a remote at the monitor at the head of the table. A montage of a glowering Law handing one mucky note after the other to the disapproving staff pixelated to life, frame after frame.</p><p>In the room now his face blackened further. Patients often requested a different doctor after taking one look at that expression, but the Hearts recognised it for the discomfort it was.</p><p>"You can see her distress, yoi." Marco turned the bag. " But you did it again and again." He held the bag up, peered at the contents. "The lab report says these notes have traces of semen, saliva and even faeces. More than usual." He stared Law down like he'd crawled out of a dung heap.</p><p>Law spoke to his clasped hands, tight on the desktop, voice snarled and furled and bitter.</p><p>"Now you're getting all sensitive about jizz? I've swallowed and been coated in enough of the stuff to know its originator will probably kill you, but the artefact fucking won't."</p><p>"Can't help it if you like to play with your food," Zoro said.</p><p>Law didn't bother to look his way.</p><p>Luffy, staring at the sky, laughed.</p><p>"HIV?" Marco suggested.</p><p>"She wears gloves."</p><p>"Have to wear gloves."</p><p>Law's head jerked up to show he knew.</p><p>"Because of you," Luffy said.</p><p>"Have to wear gloves," the lady said to Luffy's back.</p><p>Law knew. He fucking knew.</p><p>A technician played about with the monitor and a new screen flickered to life. Kid, smiling, sneering into the room.</p><p>"Been live for a while, but got the visuals working now," the tech said, then left the room. The webcam reflected the office's participants in the corner.</p><p>"Yeah, sorry doll. He's got a perverted fascination with his own bodily fluids."</p><p>Law's jaw and bones jittered like glass in a coffee grinder. "Why's Killer always video me on those days?" he barked out. "Why's he always make sure I go through with the transaction?"</p><p>He dared a glance at the woman.</p><p>"They won't let me bypass the van on those days," he said quietly to her. She ignored him. Scared his breath, his gaze, would contaminate her.</p><p>"Can't record you all the time. Have to expect you'll do the right thing some of the time." Kid's tinny voice brought all eyes to the front.</p><p>Law clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth and that would've earnt Marco gripping his thigh if he was next to him.</p><p>"And makes no fucking difference." Kid leered from the monitor. "What d'ya do? Ya, sleaze? You jerk off into those, just for kicks? Those ladies work damn hard and don't need some up himself shitbag surgeon to crap all over their day."</p><p>Law's fingers spidered against his forehead. That tattooed threat had come right at Kid in the past, but now it was just an upside down jumble of letters.</p><p>"Make him eat it," Luffy said from the corner of the room.</p><p>Law stared at Kid and flipped the guy off. He'd pay for it later. Stared at Luffy gazing out at the skyline, kicking his legs back and forth. Put his hand out to Marco for the plastic bag.</p><p>"Thinks it's so funny, make him eat it," the director repeated, voice low.</p><p>"Cap'n?" Penguin asked.</p><p>Law shook his head. No. He never deliberately defaced even one of the fucking notes.</p><p>Bepo signed under the table, and Law signed back, truncated, with his free hand. They had their system. One of the volunteers at the clinic in Flevance had taught him. Sometimes Bepo preferred not to speak, and Law knew how he felt.</p><p>The guy had a shock of Andy Warhol white, and had studied speech therapy and learnt sign language thinking it'd help him with his career. Flevance had been on friendlier terms with surrounding nations then, and foreign students had more freedom and chances to enrol in a variety of courses.</p><p>"Ma'm," Law said, trying again. "I'm sorry." He pulled the grimy bits of cash from their holder. "But I'd never willingly treat anyone with such disregard." He was in the caring industry for fuck's sake. He knew plenty of practitioners didn't give a shit, but he did. "Never."</p><p>Understand, obeying Kid saved him a hell of a beating, or at least he could fool himself that it did. Understand how much he hated doing it.</p><p>Her lip twitched. Disbelief. "And yet you did." She was so used to that flush of red that she almost thought it was his natural disposition. Nothing sorry about it in his voice or those damned hateful eyes.</p><p>Arms wrapped tightly around her body, she turned her head away. How could a surgeon be forced to do anything? The rich ones were always the kinkiest.</p><p>"He's used to swallowing half those things anyway," Zoro said, which was Law's point. Except for being normalised to the practice.</p><p>Luffy looked on with manic interest. He had a keen sense of justice.</p><p>Law pulled one beri note from the bag and then the other. A click of a lighter, the smell of burning paper, he lit the notes in sight of everyone. Bepo had an unfortunate smoking habit. The table didn't even rock as he clambered onto it, shoes on, and held the money under the sprinkler and fire warning system.</p><p>The van lady gasped. Law didn't know if it was because he hadn't slipped his shoes off, or because she was now face level with his shins.</p><p>The Hearts stretched in their seats, legs long. Ready. Zoro and Marco passed stares.</p><p>Droplets of water flew through the room as the sprinklers shot on just as the alarm let out a persistent whoop and Law shook his head. The notes were dried up and crinkled and ignited easily. Maybe jizz was flammable. Who knew?</p><p>Marco lunged forward. Law retreated to the back of the table. Zoro's chair fell to the ground, the nurse ready to act if needed. Kid swore that if Law didn't get his draggy-arsed fuckhole off the table and away from the fire detectors he'd more than pay for it. As if he wouldn't already.</p><p>The staff from the van were more than pissed off, soaked through.</p><p>"Doctor Trafalgar has clean money. Comes out and gives it to us later when he can't pay in the morning." The woman shivered. "That's how we know it's some kinda sick prank."</p><p>Kid heard over the noise.</p><p>"He has what?"</p><p>It was a sturdy table. Law ran its length, boots pounding. He aimed, leapt and kicked forward at the monitor with both feet. It exploded, fractured—Kid a prism of purple and red before sputtering to nothing. A few shards of glass fell to the floor as the monitor toppled from its stand, wires fizzing dangerously in the water.</p><p>Law vaulted back onto the table. Who'd he think he was? Long John Silver? Erratic as fuck. Luffy stared at Marco and the fellow doctor climbed behind Law, grabbed him tightly under his arms, squeezing him back against him, and kicked the rear of his legs at the knee. Law dropped. Marco slapped the ingrate's hand and extinguished the smouldering notes under his shoe and into water gathered on the surface.</p><p>Law, bent down under Marco, didn't put up a fight, but his crew didn't look so obedient. Luffy strolled over. He pulled his shirt away from his chest. It was a good piece of clothing, ruined by selfish antics. He held Law's chin in his thumb and pointer, the surgeon's breath a racehorse of panic.</p><p>"Dumb move, Torao. Really dumb."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. you let me violate you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Warnings</b>: It's dark. Gets dark before it gets better and it doesn't get better in this chapter.  Explicit sexual content, sexual assault, rape, non-con, smack talk, etc.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter 8—you let me violate you</strong>
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<hr/><p>"...really dumb."</p><p>Luffy slapped Law across the face, and Marco let go of Law's arms and Luffy cracked him across the other cheek and he did nothing, Law did nothing, he just knelt there, face flying left then right with the momentum of the blows. Maintenance staff had turned off the sprinklers at Zoro's insistence.</p><p>"See your boss now, boys." And Luffy grabbed Law's lips between thumb and forefinger and squished them into caricature. The loudest thing in the room was his call for breath.</p><p>"Tell them, Law." Luffy jerked his thumb the Heart crew's way.</p><p>"They know I'm a whore, shithead," he slurred through Luffy's grip, clothes dripping.</p><p>Luffy slapped him across the face once more.</p><p>Bepo lunged.</p><p>"Back off," Law and Luffy ground out in unison, Law spitting blood.</p><p>"You're gonna kill him." Penguin rested his elbow on Shachi's shoulder, both men stared at the director. A splash of water trailed the bill of his cap.</p><p>"He killed Ace," Luffy stated, and raised a hand. The Hearts were to halt right there.</p><p>"He didn't." Penguin kicked the table-leg. It didn't budge. "And you fucked him up before Ace died."</p><p>"We just fuck him up harder now," Zoro said. "He's a whore. You heard him."</p><p>"Go." Law shook his head free of Luffy's grip. "Get outta here."</p><p>"You don't want to see it." Marco organised his soggy papers with one arm, held Law with the other.</p><p>"Really." Luffy leant in. "It'd be fun, Law, wouldn't it? For them to watch?"</p><p>"Take them and get the fuck out," Law jerked his head at the van women. His eyes ablaze, but Penguin caught the flicker of appeal.</p><p>"After all, you are Law's Flevance friends," Vivi said to the Hearts.</p><p>One of the women gasped, pulled out her hand sanitiser and squeezed a few droplets onto her palm. Water had flown through the room from the surgeon's hair and body with all the activity.</p><p>"Maybe you'd like the same treatment?" Vivi asked the three. "Maybe we should embellish the character report the next time we submit it to the government." She looked at Penguin then over at Luffy. Her hair was ruined. She wasn't in a good mood.</p><p>"Provisional visas," Luffy said. Still hemming Law in, he stared at them. "You all can go, but first witness how he knows he did wrong cos he never fights back." Luffy delivered another stinging blow that shook Law's teeth.</p><p>"He just takes it." Vivi's face scrunched with distaste. "Apologise to the van lady, Law. You've made her life hell."</p><p>Law looked her way, teeth bared and blood-streaked. "I'm sorry," because he truly was. What was her name? "Leave with my crew."</p><p>"Why, Law? Luffy asked. "Tell her."</p><p>"My second job requires my services."</p><p>"Specialised services," Luffy whispered, tracing a finger along Law's jawline.</p><p>"You need us too, right, Law?" Zoro crowded in.</p><p>"To control your impulses?" Marco pulled Law's hair back.</p><p>"To help cure your horrible Flevish ways with a taste of your own promiscuity, right?"</p><p>"Tell her."</p><p>"Let her know</p><p>"How happy you are</p><p>"To be punished..."</p><p>Marco flicked the lighter. The flint still ignited.</p><p>"And that it will never happen again, but you know your punishment should be endless—</p><p>"Relentless."</p><p>"Without mercy or stop, right, Law?"</p><p>Vivi held the door open and followed the van employees out. The couple could not leave fast enough. They'd always known there was something not quite right with Doctor Trafalgar. The Hearts trailed after them. Shachi punched the wall, but Law would pay for his anger. Vivi locked the door after her and pocketed the key.</p>
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<hr/><p>He hadn't been compliant. That wasn't good. And his crew had almost fought them. Marco held him from behind this time, on the broad sweep of windowsill that trimmed Luffy's office, Law's legs hooked over Marco's own to keep them wide, then under his calves to secure him.</p><p>The Phoenix rested his head on Law's shoulder like a curious child checking out his mother's morning paper. Not understanding the contents. Just wanting to be in her space. To <em>be</em> her space. To own it. He toyed with a nipple, licked up the side of Law's neck, and his other hand cupped his cock in casual possession.</p><p>Law was lathered, prepped, dripping, bruised. Already used. Panting. Struggling. Kept trying to get away. A frightened bird pushed up against diamonds of chicken wire. Marco inhaled the acrid sweat. Nuzzled the small curls at the nape of his neck. A child slamming a picture book on top of the paper. Attention should be given to superiors without having to demand it.</p><p>"Maybe Bepo is right and we should ease up a bit," Luffy said, running a flattened palm along an inside thigh.</p><p>"Or if no-one wants him, to be treated by him, can just do what we like." Zoro's voice cut through the room from the door. "Kick him to the curb once he's of no use."</p><p>Or put out the body bag. The hospital had a temporary morgue. Could put him in that, breathing. Zoro pictured him contained, frigid, panicked—fucked—and then closing the zip over his ineffectual alien form. Or zipping up and then somehow fucking him. How could that be managed?</p><p>"Hold on." Marco's cheek rubbed against Law's. "I'm good, but I still need his help."</p><p>The smooching and nibbling of Law's neck goose-pimpled his skin and—</p><p>"Ha-ha. He can never stop that freaking shake. Scared of us or something, Law?'</p><p>"What's that fucking noise he's making?" Zoro rubbed at his eye. "<em>Ge-ge-ge</em>," he mimicked like a frog in a pond. "You gotta draw some air, yah pussy. Else you'll pass out and have no idea what we get up to." The body bag sprang to mind again. The incinerator for toxic waste.</p><p>Luffy leant in, one hand on the back of Marco's head so the Phoenix was pressed into Law's neck further, and the director's kisses, attempts at placation, were ridiculously gentle.</p><p>Law recoiled from all that implied, but it <em>was</em> a bitter relief that Luffy wasn't splitting his face in two. The director couldn't exactly get what he wanted due to the tremors. Law could hardly think. "Shhh, calm down, calm down," Luffy soothed, pulling away, planting a small kiss on Law's temple. "It's okay, really."</p><p>Like fuck it was, but a broken part of Law leant into the softer words, the touch. Was he worth something?</p><p>"Kid really made you pass those notes over?" Luffy giggled. The thought of it, of what Law must have gone through, did a pretty good job of making him hard, but he ran his hand along his dick to help it get there.</p><p>Law kicked out, but Marco clamped his leg down easily. "There, there," he licked and took the earrings in his mouth. "Easy tiger."</p><p>Luffy nudged his cock against Law's opening, indicating to Marco to spread the legs more. Marco was hard behind Law's back. The Whitebeard's thighs widened too, and pressed in on the sides. Marco leant against the window, and pulled Law to him. No clothes, again. Birthday suit <em>was</em> Law's look. Such a shame to hide those tattoos.</p><p>"Grody, man. I mean, you should have refused. Imagine the shit you could have circulated." Luffy pushed in, a bit, the elasticity of give and take. A grunt. Intake of breath from Law. A squeak over that freight train of fear. They'd prepped him. He really should be ready. Happy for the fucking honour. He was chosen. Law should realise that.</p><p>"Like, hygiene's never high on the list of White Spots, but surely you know the basics." Even he had a bath once a week.</p><p>He entered. Law clenched, relaxed, tightened around him. Law braced against Marco and Luffy pushed against the Whitebeard's shoulders. Law's own arms were floppy-limbed spindles. Marco ensured they kept out of the way, though he tried—why did he always try?—to both cover his own dick and keep Marco's hand away from it.</p><p>"Ahh, feels good." Luffy said, relaxed for a beat. Breathed out. Looked up at Law with a grin. "Feel good, Torao. You hungry for it?"</p><p>He idly ran his fingers along Marco's hand along Law's cock as if eyeing his favourite meal (which was all of them) in the cafeteria. Law was going to chew his lip off if he bit it much harder. Kinda liked it when he or one of them drew blood.</p><p>Luffy raised his eyes, removed his hand, Marco continued to play. "You love me, Law?" he asked.</p><p>Zoro and Marco pricked up their ears. "Kid tells me you say you love him all the time."</p><p>"You're the boss," Law breathed out. Luffy was inside of him. Filling the space. Invading it. Luffy nodded and smiled. That was the right answer. Law's hole felt more relaxed to him, or ready at the least, and even if it wasn't, like he stated—Luffy was the boss. He didn't like that wince and grappling for air when he pushed in further.</p><p>Law tried to rearrange his legs but Marco held firm. "Silly chicken, silly doofus, you can't go anywhere," he crooned.</p><p>"I'm sure you say the same thing to Zoro and Marco." Luffy looked at his men, and they nodded, grim smiles in place. Law loved whoever shovelled their cock into him.</p><p>"Did you say it to Ace?" Marco yanked Law's head back from the hair. His Adam's apple rose and fell.</p><p>Law's torso arched, trying to get away. There was a clatter against the wood as Marco adjusted his own legs and his shoes hit against the wood panelling, trying to keep Law still as Luffy started to fuck him.</p><p>"Bepo gave you that lighter, huh?" Luffy asked ramming Law, flesh against flesh. In, out and in again. The window buttressed Marco. Law would've doubled down without the Phoenix's hold—no will, just muscle, tissue, sinew, tattoos in a compliant joy of motion. Yeah joy—the beauty of motion. Watching Law get fucked was like watching a cheetah unfurl across the plain. But one being chased by a safari jeep, tyres rutting dust across rough tracks. "Guess it's time I looked at his paperwork."</p><p>Law stilled. Let Luffy rock into him. His arse pushing back against Marco's hard-on. The soft cloth of well-worn scrubs rubbed against him.</p><p>Marco planted a kiss on Law's cheek, murmured in his ear. "He was mine. Ace was mine."</p><p>Law closed his eyes before Luffy headbutted his stomach. While fucking him. The buzz—both from impact, and whatever that did to the muscles in Law's body—increased Luffy's enjoyment. One crack shot to the cheetah's tendon. They'd have to try asphyxiation some time. Kid had shown him how.</p><p>"Eyes on the prize, Torao." And he tipped his own head down to view his cock fucking Law up, and Marco pushed Law's head slightly to make sure he watched himself getting fucked up. Observed his wilful participation. Luffy's grip was tight on Marco and Law was so accessible with Marco's skill.</p><p>"See how easy it is to ream you." Marco cooed and Law both turned his neck to the words and, shoulder rising, tried to move himself away.</p><p>"Shachi's under review too," Luffy said.</p><p>Law relaxed as much as he could considering his adrenaline levels were the strum of an engine at high speed in first gear.</p><p>"Back to the notes." God Law felt good. Good boy. He was taking all of him so well. "The beri. We thought of chewing them up ourselves—there's more than the ones we had in the meeting you decided to sabotage."</p><p>"Easy there, boss." Marco was sure the window was solid, but they were a long way from the ground, and every push into Law also pushed him against the glass.</p><p>Luffy really wanted to concentrate on the task at hand, which included those feathery fucking kisses. He loved Law's lips. Storming that enticing cavity of a mouth.</p><p>"Push his face forward."</p><p>Marco lifted his hand from Law's nipple and pushed his head.</p><p>"Thought of chewing the beri up and feeding them to you like this." Luffy leant in and claimed Law's mouth. They sure made a pretty pair, Zoro thought from the doorway.</p><p>"But y'know," Zoro continued his boss' explanation, "you're used to being filled with shit and cum and who knows the fuck what. Probably eat rats as a delicacy in that third world shithole you come from."</p><p>Zoro turned a popstick in some kind of paste in a plastic cup. He crossed the floor, steps soft across the carpet. He wasn't sure whether he was a little jealous that Luffy was getting all of Law, or that Law was getting all of Luffy. He'd get his chance with either man later.</p><p>"Like Luff says, we were gonna chew up the notes—masticate 'em—and feed them to you like regurgitated bird slop. You simple folk need that kind of parental guidance, right, Law? Makes you feel wanted. Even if you can't tell the difference between vomit and vittles."</p><p>Law had all the agency of a ragdoll, flopping around under Luffy. Really, he should hold on instead of being so stubborn. Who knew such brawn and tone could so easily be thrown about.</p><p>"And we only discipline you because we care, y'know?"</p><p>He knew the surgeon was listening. Even though he was trying to breath and get through Marco stroking his dick, Luffy fucking him, and tonguing his throat. Because there was nothing calm about his eyes—or those sounds—but Zoro noted them tracking him over the floor. Noted him trying to pull Marco's arms away from his body. Lies. He was drinking in Luffy's focus.</p><p>"Right, Law?" Marco whispered into his neck. His lazy thumbing of the head of his dick reaped early harvest as precum sank into the v of his hand.</p><p>"Right, Law?" Luffy asked as he pulled away. He gripped Law's hips now. Pulled him forward and he slipped a little away from Marco.</p><p>Law's breathing was closer to drowning and maybe that was a nod. You couldn't tell what he really thought at this junction of breaking, especially considering how his body jackhammered about.</p><p>"But we're first-world here," Zoro continued. "High level of sanitation. Probably wouldn't even affect you."</p><p>Zoro was close, and he had a hand clamped on Law's moving thigh. "But it'd make us sick as fuck to feed you that way."</p><p>He removed his hand and continued to stir the liquid, the paste. "Punishment is where punishment is due."</p><p>"Taste of your own medicine, if you will," Marco said. He exhaled from his nose and Law felt the air settle over his skin. "Poor van ladies. How could you?"</p><p>Comprehension was a dotted mesh of panic.</p><p>Luffy continued at it. Holding onto Law's glorious hips and bones and skin until the finale. "So good, Torao. You feel so fucking good." Zoro moved in from the side. Marco's hands ran up and down Law's torso.</p><p>"So special to get all this attention, Torao. You're such a special boy."</p><p>Law followed any kind of softness at about this point like an innocent daisy trailing the sun. That was the most pathetic thing about him. Zoro smiled and moved to feed the concoction but Law both turned his head and put up his hands, free from Marco, to block it. Zoro looked at the Phoenix, and he secured Law. Luffy's arms were strong enough to keep down both Law's legs and Marco's.</p><p>Let's face it, they never let him get healthy enough to get strong enough to be of any effect against them.</p><p>"Penguin," Luffy puffed out. "Fuck man." He held onto Law's face, kissed the tangle of black. Law's tears like salt on caramel. "Gotta access his file too."</p><p>Zoro drew Law's face to him as Luffy let go. He pinched his nostrils together, considering the surgeon had petulantly pressed his lips together. They parted with a gush of air and a constant tremble and Zoro tipped the contents down Law's gullet, the shitty surgeon twisting in Marco's hold. He was being a right pain in the butt today. He'd find himself back in a hospital bed if he wasn't careful.</p><p>"The analysis showed semen, shit, saliva, sweat. Money isn't clean, you know. Passes from one hand to another. And what a waste. It's still money."</p><p>"Don't gag," Luffy ordered.</p><p>"Consider it payment for services rendered," Marco said.</p><p>That look on Law's face was priceless. Luffy was glad he'd kissed him before he swallowed that nasty shit down.</p><p>Law had cut his inner lip when he'd clenched it, and fear of another infection settled on top of the damage done to his psyche and body. He clamped down the bile. He had to swallow it down. They were the instructions.</p><p>"Whore," Zoro laughed. "At least I'm not going to stick my dick into that." He ran a finger in Law's puckered mouth. "Thank god for small mercies, eh? Law?"</p><p>"The other hole's good though." Luffy blew his load into it with a roar. It was always best to fill Torao up from either end. He rested his head against Law's chest, torso heaving, hands on Marco's arms, cock twitching.</p><p>"Always is."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Got a chapter count up there. It might be a bit longer, but I've got the next few chapters and ending fleshed out.</p><p>Anyone still reading this? Interested in it? Drop a kudos. Drop a line. Let me know.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. aftercare</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>the care after the act.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For all my private guilty pleasure bookmarkers, not that I know you you are ♥ If you enjoy this, don't forget to drop a secret, private guilty pleasure guest kudos if you haven't already (many thanks to those who have!). Or even a signed one. Either is fine by me. No big warnings, but the chapter contains adult themes. Proceed accordingly.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter nine—aftercare</strong>
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<hr/><p>"You killed them, didn't you?"</p><p>Law lay wrapped in Luffy's arms on the couch in his office, trying to locate the lilac and deeper purples of the abstract. There. The pulsing of his own bruises alleviated as his eye (swollen as it was) drank in the shading, the brushstrokes, of lilac to purple, maroon to black. Luffy had dimmed the room to a nice ambient glow.</p><p>"No," he tried to move his head, but everything hurt, and Luffy clung to him like wrap to leftovers. As if a meal ever saw a second helping where the kid was concerned. Law being the exception.</p><p>"It's okay," Luffy pushed Law's hair back, kissed a blackened temple (they'd let it connect with a tabletop), savoured the illicit pleasure of...aw man, that mouth was anything but frigid. Tongue slipping between Law's widening, yielding lips (they'd made him gargle a shit-ton of mouthwash), Luffy's fingers spread on his subordinate's tender ribs.</p><p>"All those people in the truck. Why'd you survive, Law? Only you?" Luffy pulled from the embrace, half his words buzzed against Law's mouth.</p><p>His employees shouldn't cry. shouldn't scrunch their shoulders like that. Had to be strong and brave. He wiped a thumb and brushed the moisture from under Law's eye, set his lips against it, Law's lashes heavenly against his skin.</p><p>"Was it a plague? Did you infect them all? Or practice your vivisection skills?"</p><p>Law tilted his neck and jaw to the side as Luffy followed its curve with light caresses and touch along its muscles and sinews.</p><p>It wasn't contagious, was it? Wasn't there an antidote? His mother, father made it?</p><p>"There's a cure," Law said.</p><p>"I don't think so, Torao."</p><p>Law lifted his arm so this kid—who was he?—could work his way down his body, tongue on his nipple now. He guessed it felt nice if the rest didn't ache so much. Maybe it was safe. This guy was in control of something. It was a privilege to be chosen by him. He'd heard that somewhere, had been told.</p><p>"I killed them?" Confused. Quiet. simple.</p><p>"Mmm."</p><p>Law had his hand in Luffy's hair as he adjusted his position. Went lower. Felt his lips around his...</p><p>Wasn't he the whore? That wasn't right.</p><p>Luffy rose.</p><p>Law was relieved. He didn't feel like it at the moment, and sometimes he got into trouble if he came. He couldn't let them know when he wasn't in the mood. Didn't have that option.</p><p>"We forgive you. We understand. We know you can't control your bat-crazy pathological shit. But it comes at a price, right?"</p><p>Luffy dipped down again and Law shivered with the touch. Not out of the woods yet.</p><p>"We protect you from prosecution," Luffy's voice murmured against his pubes, "but you're ours. You've pledged your service to us."</p><p>Law ran his fingers against the scalp of the kid. It was best to be happy with what he had. He supposed there was worse. His hair was coarse.</p><p>"But your tats, Law."</p><p>Law looked at the back of his hand then across at the kid who had worked his way back up the bed, and was now face to face with him. He wiped a hand across the back of his lips.</p><p>Law couldn't see him clearly, his face looming into, blocking his vision. Guess down below had held his attention for all of two seconds. It was Law's job to give and be taken, not the other way around.</p><p>"They're not mine." The kid's other hand idled where his lips had been…that also held his attention for all of two seconds, then he reburied his face in Law's chest. "But you're mine, Torao." He sat up and kissed him on the cheek. "How about a straw hat just here?"</p><p>Law held a shaky hand to the spot, like a fan-struck teenager, kept Luffy's gaze.</p><p>Luffy removed it. "But, yeah. The patients probably wouldn't like it." They had enough trouble with the existing tats already.</p><p>He flipped Law's hand over, Law following the motion like a baby tracking llight. The kid ran his fingers along the veins of his inner wrist. "How about here? A small hat, then you'll always know who you belong to." Luffy kissed the hatched lines. "You'll, always be reminded of me."</p><p>He flipped his own wrist to show his off. "Black, not colour, because you're a worker not an officer, but it'd be cool, right?" Folks clambered over themselves to be part of his crew.</p><p>Law tried to pull his hand in, free. Something was wrong. It was a bad idea, and he wasn't sure why. Luffy tightened his hold.</p><p>"Are you sorry, Torao?"</p><p>Maybe because he was the whore, but Luffy had gone down on him? Or because he didn't want the tattoo? Law nodded. A bird peck of motion. He hoped it was the right answer. Glanced at the kid from under his fringe.</p><p>"Will it happen again?"</p><p>No, he wouldn't forget. He'd make sure Luffy had what he wanted. He'd do what he wanted. Take what was coming to him without complaint. He shook his head.</p><p>That smile was brilliant, sun-like. Being in its orbit was a soak of celestial warmth. All focused on him. Law felt special. Or lucky. He knew Luffy could turn a stroke into a pinch or a punch just as quickly, but his skin tingled as the kid's fingers skated his cheek. He dipped his head in response. In gratitude.</p><p>A smile crinkled Luffy's eyes. He sighed at his errant Law. What to do? "You've been punished enough, so let's sleep."</p><p>Luffy backed up, turned around and pushed into the gangly surgeon. Law wrapped his arms around the packed, muscled body. He'd try harder to be good. Luffy kissed his hand.</p><p>"Night, Torao. It's time to rest."</p><p>Luffy fell asleep, his breath a regular, reassuring rhythm. Law matched it and did the same.</p>
<hr/><p>No surgeries were scheduled, were they? They'd interviewed new doctors. Law hadn't lost anyone, even with all the shit, but it was only a matter of time. They scheduled him less, and it was true, patients often requested reallocation with other surgeons once they learned he was from Flevance. Once they caught a look at his face—smashed up and in more often than not. Exhausted.</p><p>He had washed in the staff showers. Reassured Penguin over and over he was okay as he leant against him, sipping his morning coffee over cuts, clots and blotted memory.</p><p>Back in his office he wasn't quite sure what was going on. What was the routine? He sat at his desk and his phone buzzed. Kid. He pulled it out of his pocket, read the screen.</p><p>—Give Luffy a good time?</p><p>Law didn't know. Really, he didn't.</p><p>—Dunno.</p><p>He sat back in his chair. The phone buzzed. He picked it up, read the message.</p><p>—Slut. Of course you did.</p><p>Law sent a random emoticon that may have had a finger raised or not. Switched it off. Couldn't handle it. Luffy and Kid would compare notes later.</p><p>He'd changed into a spare dress-shirt pulled from the room's closet. Did the buttons up slowly and secured the cuffs. His crew was okay. That was good. His tats were in place. Why wouldn't they be?</p><p>He looked down at the desk. At the neat pens to the side. That number. What could Smoker do? Getting caught up in that system would mean disappearance. But wasn't he disappeared already?</p><p>He glanced up. The door was locked. He reached under the desk and released the hidden drawer. Had memorised the number, but wanted to see it, solid, whole, in his hands.</p><p>The drawer stuck half way out. That goddamned ruler was an arm's length away. Law grabbed it and ran it along the underside of the table where it and the compartment hinged. The ruler loosened the obstacle and pushed it down into the tray. The drawer slid out and Law picked out the folded paper. Numbers called on his phone would be tracked, office phone too. He'd have to think of how to word any request to Smoker.</p><p>Folded into quarters, Law returned the scrap to the compartment and pushed the tray back in. It jammed. He jiggled it, shook it up and down. All the money Ace had given was gone. Was some left behind? Overlooked? Caught up?</p><p>He checked the door once more, got down on his knees, slid the ruler in, tried to sight the trajectory. Yeah, some wadded up bunch of blockage was preventing smooth traction over the rails.</p><p>He levered the space between the compartment, the blockage, and the desk. The wad fell back into the drawer, and the tray coasted towards him.</p><p>Law relaxed in his seat. He pulled the bundle, the obstacle, to him. It was soft. A folded moleskin with Ace's initials embroidered on the edge of the cloth. He ran his fingers over it and took a breath. Ace-ya. Missed him so much. He unfolded the material. Red. A little square book. He opened to the first page.</p><p>Dark hair. Glasses. Serious guy. He didn't have much to smile about. His photo. Laurent Lee. Age. A few years older. A good likeness.</p><p>Law leant into the chair back. The red book almost fell from his hand. A passport. He glanced at the door. Ace's plan. He'd have to remember to wear his glasses. Only wore them for reading and only half the time.</p><p>He unfolded the soft cotton further. A card embossed with Laurent Lee, a PIN, some cash, three passport-sized photos of his crew. A number. A contact for new identities for them?</p><p>Ace didn't sell his soul for this, he didn't.</p><p>The door.</p><p>Still locked.</p><p>How to get the identities to work? He'd suck a thousand cocks for freedom.</p>
<hr/><p>A downswing at the end of most sentences. Not prominent, but the accent was there. Smoker drew back on his cigar and exhaled, phone to ear. That doctor had a similar turn of phrase.</p><p>Bepo tried to remember what he'd been told to say. They had more opportunities to come and go than Law, so even though it wasn't wise to use their own phones (they were hospital-issued) the Hearts could leave the grounds.</p><p>Hair hidden under a cap, collar flipped to hide his neck, he lounged in the phone booth like some Cipher-Pol spy. Did those guys even exist? Law seemed to believe they did.</p><p>"The surgeon discovered the gardener's plan."</p><p>"Oh?" Smoker sat up straight. "Ace?"</p><p>"Yeah."</p><p>"Doc wants to know if you can help?"</p><p>"How?"</p><p>"Can you meet? Doc can't come, but he's sending me."</p><p>"What visa you on?"</p><p>Bepo wondered how he knew. What it mattered.</p><p>"Bridging."</p>
<hr/><p>Close enough to immigration for Smoker to pass as a case officer and close enough for Bepo to be nervous, they met at a cafe cracked and bright with disregard and the hostaged patronage of being the sole food establishment on the incarceration side of town.</p><p>Smoker waited for the coffees—weak, watery, white—before asking after Law.</p><p>"They're gonna kill him," Bepo said. " He's only just holding on." He shovelled a spoonful of sugar into his drink. Sometimes Law was a hundred percent with them, but lately he'd taken to singing Luffy's praises like the disturbingly indoctrinated. They didn't want to lose him.</p><p>Silence got more info. Smoker waited.</p><p>"At times I go to his office and he's just sitting there."</p><p>"Arranging pens?"</p><p>"Yeah, over and over. But not even that now."</p><p>"What's he got? Ace's plan?"</p><p>Bepo passed across a small chip. "For your phone." He sipped the coffee. Like cigarette ash.</p><p>What cop wasn't prepared? Smoker pulled out a reader, inserted the chip, and flicked through the images. "Laurent Lee?"</p><p>"Ace's idea."</p><p>Guess it made sense.</p><p>"These photos?"</p><p>"Law's crew. Us. We've got passports but our visas are bridging."</p><p>"Can't you wait it out?"</p><p>"Luffy's our sponsor. He uses us to keep Law in line."</p><p>"Law's set?"</p><p>Maybe. He hadn't shared the phone number Law found with the passport.</p><p>"I won't stand in your way," Smoker said at Bepo's small nod, disconnected the reader. That shock of white really did have to be hidden under a cap. Smoker hoped the rest of Law's crew were a little less noticeable.</p><p>"We need safe passage, an arrival point."</p><p>And Smoker needed to win the lottery but no matter how much he prayed or paid, his wallet remained empty.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for reading. Let me know what you thought, fear, hope.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. an old boiler</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I haven't lied to you in any of my replies to your comments.</p><p><b>Trigger Warnings</b>: It's dark. Rape, non-con, sexual assault, abuse. Law gets hurt. No respite.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter 10: an old boiler</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>Fuck but Law put up a struggle nowadays. Must know he was on his way out.</p><p>It was later at night, the corridors of the hospital fluorescent, except for the few dank corners they knew well. Face first, Law's breath rasped across the painted wall as Zoro dragged him along it, yanked his hand perpendicular, lining his fingers up with the hinges and gap of a door, and swung it open.</p><p>The raggedy slice of skin hanging from Law's thumb tip, that <em>was </em>his thumb tip, the disproportionate splash of red smearing his and Zoro's skin and clothes and the wall—his shout of pain—were obscured by the rattle of a gurney down the hallway.</p><p>Cut and broken fingers or not, he kicked and punched against the muscle-bound nurse as they scuffled and scrambled to the stairs.</p><p>Zoro pushing him forward, Marco coming up the rear.</p><p>Zoro had shared his body bag fantasy with Law more than once. Nothing quite like seeing an ashen face pale even more. A young intern, part of Luffy's crew, was climbing the ranks. Law knew they wouldn't hurt the prodigy if he belonged to the firm, but the only thing that kept him and his crew some form of breathing was his own skill as a surgeon.</p><p>"Chopper's teaching that procedure you're always too up-yourself to show me." Marco pushed him from behind down the last few steps of the stairs leading to the second floor. Law stumbled, feet slipping onto the landing, hands raised against the wall to stop from crashing into it. Marco moved in, turned him around.</p><p>"Tch. Who's gonna clean that up?"</p><p>A bloodied hand print stained the plaster next to Law's head.</p><p>He clutched the surgeon's collar, breathed into his face, hauled him along the brick to the next set of stairs to accidentally break his neck on.</p><p>"Calm your epinephrine-addled-self down. Gonna give yourself a heart attack before we get the chance to fuck you."</p><p>Law grabbed at Marco's hand at his neck. Pushed it off. The snap of bone let him know he'd misaligned a digit. Marco's yowl confirmed it. Hoped he'd broken it.</p><p>He wasn't too impatient to teach anything, but too fucked up. If they'd only left him alone for a second or two for the duration of this godforsaken indenture, he'd teach anyone anything. His legs shook but he had to keep moving.</p><p>Blood all over his shirt from his thumb. Some older stains too. Zoro had seemed surprised to see them. He kept tally of Law's bruises. Maybe he didn't recognise them. Perhaps jealous that another sadist had accessorised his clothes.</p><p>Could be that Law usually tidied up after an assault. Kid hadn't been as concerned about his appearance of late. His wardrobe allowance had dwindled. Maybe Zoro was surprised that Law wore a soiled item.</p><p>Elbow to sternum, forearm to chin, the Phoenix's head flipped and slammed against the wall, a shadow of scrubs brushing over the block, red gushing from his nose.</p><p>Law leapt down the last set of stairs, steadied himself at the exit to the corridor. Zoro ran at him low, and Law spun and grabbed at the back of the buffoon's shirt, used the nurse’s momentum to propel him forward, rammed his head into the handle of an office door opposite. Enough to kill an ordinary man, but Zoro was a monster. The impact lifted and tore at his scalp. Law didn't wait to see him pick himself up off the floor.</p><p>He raced back through the entrance. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Marco holding the bridge of his wrist to his nose. He took another flight of stairs, dashed into the hallway. If he could only get into his office. Get the passport. Get out of there. Staff steered clear of him anyway, but he was like Moses, except rather than parting the Red Sea it was his fucking wake, considering how much he bled.</p><p>His boots pounded like a Mack truck through the hospital, breath a pump and shrill of fire and vacuum. An under-sole flipped back and his ankle flared as he wrenched his body toward his office but his foot twisted in the opposite direction. Keep moving. Regardless. Thumb, ankle, stomach face, mind, soul. He had to get out of there.</p><p>His boots were shoddy but he hadn't reached the requisite humiliation targets for Kid to deem he'd earnt a new pair.</p><p>And speak of the devil in its snugly muscled border-protection-issued uniform, thick arms and neck screaming government-sanctioned-reassurance. Kid. Striding down the corridor. Thumb and forefinger clicking in impatience and resolve. Calling in a dog. An underling. His underlings' underling.</p><p>No nonsense. Never fear. Safe from harm so long as he's here.</p><p>Kid grabbed Law around the waist, rocketing from the kick that flared a spinifex of pain from the doctor's ankle to his lower back, but didn't let him go.</p><p>"Where y'headed to, darling?"</p><p>He ran a hand through his whore's more than bountiful locks and yanked his head back. He was really gonna cop it if he didn't stop flailing around like that.</p><p>Zoro and Marco raced up. Bloodied, snarling. Seemed the worm had turned. Law elbowed back, but Zoro fisted his hands and smashed his bowed forearms over Law's head and back. He would have dropped, but Kid secured him.</p><p>"Keep down, y'motherfucker." Had to regain his own footing to counterbalance Law's useless twitching and Zoro's attack.</p><p>Elbows, feet, hands and arms—six pairs—kicks and punches to Law's face and jaw and stomach subdued him. Took three of them to hold his writhing, bucking...<em>Jesus Christ, Law, why was today so different from the rest?</em>...form down to the morgue. Everyone bloody, bathed in spittle and perspiration.</p><p>"He's usually so mellow," Kid said, gripping Law's face under his arm. He tapped the clammy, matted head, and avoided the bared teeth. He wouldn't have too many of those left if he kept that up.</p><p>Zoro knotted a kerchief he sometimes wore doubled over his bicep—it kept sweat out of his eyes during difficult operations—around Law's legs, and all three carried him like a plank of wood, buckling and warping in water and heat.</p><p>"Down there." Marco pointed his head towards the double doors of the morgue. "Doctor Death, right? With those tats."</p><p>"Just like coming home, Law," Zoro said.</p>
<hr/><p>They had to untie his legs to have access, but the confines of the body bag kept him basically in place. Kid kissed him before zipping the bag up over his trembling, thrashing face. If anyone heard, they turned a deaf ear. Law was there under the good grace of the director. All staff understood.</p><p>They'd stripped him of his clothes like any respectable cavader. Still twisting under there. Who knew skin made such a racket against fabric? They had needed to move fast to avoid directed kicks when they'd untied the knots. Kid leant across the bag just about where Law's windpipe should be, and pushed into it with his forearm.</p>
<hr/><hr/><p><em>It was dark and cold</em> like the truck's whispers and promises of a better life just across the border. If the door opened, cool air met warm, and dreams of minted drinks and feasts preserved beyond nature's wishes danced into the night.</p><p>Amazing things, refrigerators. Preserved slices of beef, strings of sausages, fish caught from the stream—sustenance. But they were corpses. Refrigerators preserved corpses very well. And there was Law. The last of his friends and neighbours, the last of that human cargo crossing the border under a blanket of stars and gunshot flares like northern lights.</p><p>Here. He breathed the cloth into his mouth. Here he was again. Sitting, lying, trapped in the slough of snow from mountains thawing in the sun. The water was so pure. So, so, so pure and icy, flowing all around him, under him. His buttocks pressed into pebbles and silt. Kid, someone. Kissing him through the cloth. A boulder falling from the mountain. Heavy. Alpine air should be clear and crisp.</p><p>The boulder pressed into his windpipe. An avalanche flattened his arms too. Straight by his side, caught in a pile of rubble. So difficult to move. Grey, black. The metal of the zip against his forehead, against his lips.</p><p>He jerked up, tried to move, to get away. They pushed him down. More rocks tumbled down. The sky so far away.</p><p>There was some kind of hole. His clothes. Kid hadn't been buying him new clothes. How could water isolate and freeze his private parts? Not water. Felt like Zoro. What sick fucks were these guys? Zoro’s fingers were inside of him so often. He was callous, rough, practical. Marco a little more precise, aware of the anatomy. Zoro just wanted to get to the point. Drive some fucking point home.</p><p>What was he? It wasn't like some prick clamping his head to a glory hole—he <em>was</em> the fucking glory hole. They'd erased everything else. Utilitarian. The quickest way for any of them to orgasm was to fuck him as a nameless, faceless, sack. He rose two millimetres. One? A half? Was the bag filled with rocks? Kid almost broke his collarbone with the pressure of shoving him right back down.</p><p>A little contortion. A little distortion. Then none.</p>
<hr/><p>"Still breathing there, Law?" Marco asked, looking for the rise of his chest. There, still there. No fun in fucking a dead body. He guessed. Had to be warm at least.</p><p>Zoro had prepared the bag a day or so before. Thought it all through. Luffy got his kink on sometimes, and they'd imagined scenarios and practicalities.</p><p>They'd cut a gap and lined it just about where Law's fucking shithole would be.</p><p>Luffy had supervised that day's after work session, been the sole participant—he got that way sometimes—so Zoro knew the cunt was basically prepared. This act though, the body bag, this was the ultimate. The finale.</p><p>Even with Kid's added pressure, Law's breath was so loud, so constricted. The frantic flutter of a bird protecting its nest. He was shitting himself. It'd soon be over. But best to go out banging and whimpering, right? Zoro tugged the body bag to him more directly, trying to get some audible friction up and running. From the body. Not the bag.</p><p>It <em>was</em> like fucking a corpse only it wasn't a corpse yet. Fucking him shook the bag and Law's body across the autopsy slab. The tremor all along his calf muscles vibrated against him. <em>It was right to be scared, Torao. You should be petrified</em>.</p><p>But that was a shake more extreme than Zoro had ever seen before. He indicated to Kid to give Law a bit of air. He wasn't into necrophilia. No chance for consent there. Law knew he had to service them.</p><p>Kid eased up and the Doc shot straight up, the body bag head-butting whatever it contacted, even if it was the air. Kid cursed. Did Law break his fucking arm? What did he think he was going to do? Hump down the corridor like the hungry caterpillar?</p><p>He punched him down again, fingers digging in where he thought Law's throat was. He nodded at Zoro. He better hurry up.</p><p>Zoro lifted the bag again, Law a screech of train over track. The fabric covered Zoro's chest like an operating curtain as he raised Law's enclosed legs over his shoulders, and there was no time for niceties. Man he'd fucked him so often, he knew the curves well enough to not cause too much damage. There, that small heft of his hips to make everything run smoothly. Ha ha. Even on a mortuary slab he couldn't help but be a slut. Not all assent was verbal. He wanted it so badly despite his pretense. Zoro provided.</p><p>The legs tried to kick against him, but Marco held them and slammed a hand down about where Law's balls must be. The bag let out a strangled cry, even while being strangled. Zoro slipped in. And out. And in. Juicy.</p><p>"Can't take too long."</p><p>"Yeah, on shift, they'll want us back sooner than later."</p><p>"Time for all three?" Kid asked.</p><p>"Should be. Pretty hot. Won't be able to hold on for long." Law felt so damn fucking <em>good</em>.</p>
<hr/><p>"We brought Ace down here, Law."</p><p>It was Marco's turn. "Showed you some kindness and you killed him."</p><p>Was that a lift of his arm under the canvas. Better not be flipping him off. Zoro crushed his fingers.</p><p>"Gotcha good on the nose, Phoenix," Zoro said. Marco was still bleeding, but broken noses were messy.</p><p>"Not as good as I'm gonna get him."</p>
<hr/><p>Zoro's job was to keep Law's head down. He cupped his hands over where he thought Law's ears were, and pressed. The bag flattened over the cloth over Law's mouth, startled for air like a flock of birds taking to the skies.</p><p>Marco ran his fingers along the ridges of his face. The bag was practical. You couldn't see the snot or tears or shit or piss or sweat or nails snubbed down, clinging to, scraping at the tough canvas.</p><p>He was used to it. Trapped in that truck with those slabs of meat. He must be used to it.</p><p>Kid was all over him as usual.</p><p>"Big improvement, Law. Don't have to see you've done nothing all day but fuck and suck off other men."</p><p>He was the last one, and though Marco and Zoro kept Law's head and arms steady, Kid almost fucked him off the table. Could not get enough.</p><p>And Luffy said he could. Luffy said he was his. Kid had saved Law from the government. Prosecution.</p><p>Best goddamn fuck of his life. He emptied into Law, and around him, and no doubt the body in the bag was swimming in jizz. A creature of habit, Kid grabbed a beri bill—one from his own supply…talk about sacrifices, but you had to give the dead currency for the next life. No way he wanted Trafalgar coming back to haunt him.</p><p>He jammed his hand in the gap and sopped up the emissions and shoved the money into the hole. Into Law's fucking hole, with a twist; the legs jerking in the bag, twitching like a lizard's tail. All life basically gone, despite a few muffled curses and gasps.</p><p>He lowered the zip on the bag for a moment to a stricken, shaking, water-drenched spectre. No beauty to that smeared and convulsing face. Goose-stepping tics studded his cheekbones. Lips gnawed bloody. Red dripping from his gums, over his teeth.</p><p>Zoro still held down his hands. Law gasped so it was easy to shove another balled-up beri note into his mouth, and to then yank the zip over the seizing form. Had Law's eyes rolled back?</p><p>Marco shook his head. Oof, Kid was some other brand of brutal. Zoro pressed down on Law's body and <em>it</em> jerked and fitted like an operation gone awry and then it was calm. Quiet. Stilled.</p><p>"Let's get him fixed before he fucking shits himself." He peered up at the other two, sweat dripping along his face, his hair wet. That's what the newly deceased did, right?</p><p>They tied the bag loosely. If Law had any breath left it'd be fucking crazy, and right there was the conveyer transporting toxic waste to the incinerator. The hospital had its own crematorium at one stage when it doubled as a research institute and cadavers were dissected, studied, and then discarded. New sanitation laws, a drop in budget, and a change in hospital ownership put a stop to the practice, but the basic functionality of the crematorium remained. Why install an incinerator if they had the perfect vehicle for combusting waste?</p><p>"Only way to get rid of a plague, right?"</p><p>"Go join your only friend now, Law." Marco clutched his colleague's toes through the bag, gave them a squeeze. "Though he never liked you. You latched onto him and he didn't have the heart to tell you to piss off."</p><p>Though his chances of getting to heaven and seeing Ace were next to nothing. He pressed a button and the bag moved from one room to the next.</p>
<hr/><p>In the makeshift morgue, Kid, Zoro and Marco waited for the ashes. Law's diseased body was toxic. They did the right thing by disposing of it. Kid knew another shipment of humans was sneaking across the border. They'd have a new candidate soon. Law had been getting pretty skanky. No more. And here was the proof.</p><p>"White fucking monster," said Kid, running his fingers through the remains. "Return garbage from whence it came?"</p><p>"Poetic," Marco laughed. "Yeah, who's got any more use for it?"</p><p>Guessed the gold of Law's earrings had branded his cold dead skin as the flames licked at his body and they melted. </p><p>Zoro put a thumb in the ash and marked himself like a penitent renouncing worldly indulgences. "Thanks for the memories, Law. You were a sinful fucking screw." No more temptation.</p><p>Marco tipped the remains into a black plastic bag, tied it, and placed it in the corridor for the janitor to collect. All three walked away.</p><p>"Wash up, yeah?" asked Zoro.</p><p>Marco nodded and they were thorough; scrubbed under their nails, and included their wrists, pushed back their cuticles and cleaned. They'd been dealing with bodily fluids after all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry. And it's an older kinda hospital that uses canvas body bags rather than plastic?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. well the rain exploded with a mighty crash</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Chapters 10 and 11 posted very close in time to one another.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>No warnings. Chapters 10 and 11 posted very close in time to one another.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter 11—well the rain exploded with a mighty crash</strong>
</p><hr/><p>Bepo carried the bag over his shoulder. The oven had been separated from the main room behind a partition for the sensibilities of the handful of grieving patients from when it was in more general use, and there were only a few seconds in which to grab Law and get out of there before the bag entered the furnace. He prayed he was still breathing. Those creeps were too busy congratulating themselves, checking over each other's injuries, to hear him.</p><p>The Hearts couldn't get their captain earlier without bringing attention to the whole plan, and Zoro's kink was the best way to carry everything off, but Law could be beyond claustrophobic when he had no control over the situation. Who wouldn't be? He'd known what he'd been facing, down to the journey on the conveyer belt, or it wasn't hard to guess, but that didn't make it any better. Bepo slipped out a side exit.</p><p>"Hup, hup, <em>hup</em>!" Shachi yelled from the back of the white hospital van, door open, splashes of water clearing dust on the mud flaps. Penguin drove out of the hospital grounds, windshield wipers cleaning the glass, once Bepo leapt in. Sedately, because the van was used for transporting remains to a final resting place, after all.</p><hr/><p>Smoker stood in the booth with the guard at the border, car headlights illuminating the outstations.</p><p>"They're all right," he said as a plain white Corolla pulled up. The guard stepped out and Smoker followed. He shone a light into the car.</p><p>"That one doesn't look too good." The guard pointed to the tall man collapsed on the shoulder of a friend wearing a boiler suit and a cap. Or wait. They all wore a similar uniform. The man was huddled in a blanket, and his face was a pulp of the wrong kind of attention.</p><p>Bepo had to restrain himself from pushing the torch away from Law's face.</p><p>"He's okay." Smoker showed the passport. "Needs medical attention. He's travelling for that, then he's got an appointment at a small college."</p><p>He passed across the passports of the other three. And a bundle of beri. Money he'd set aside for Ace.</p><p>"Gwin, Shaun. Ben," the guard spat out, browsing each photo and surveying the men in the car.</p><p>All three looked up, best impassive face. The guard flipped through the passports. Glanced at the guy sleeping. Yeah, they better get him through soon. He stamped all four documents and handed them back to the driver, Gwin. There was a job shortage. Needed all the hands they could get. These guys had visas and were qualified.</p><p>"On your way."</p><hr/><p><em>They threw him onto</em> the shelf for those not cremated and unzipped the bag. Almost completely fucking blue. Too still, too still, so frighteningly still. "C'mon boss, stay with us," Shachi murmured. They slipped an oxygen mask over him. Rubbed him down, with sterile wipes and then with towels. Warm, warm towels. Shachi pried his clenched fist open. Kid and his fucking money. He teased it from Law's hand and flattened his fingers, running a warm palm along the back of them.</p><p>Clothes. He'd want to wake up with clothes on. But fuck. Bepo called him over. Shachi looked at him. Penguin looked into the rear view, but couldn't see what was going on.</p><p>"Just pretend you're a proctologist."</p><p>Shachi flopped down. Pulled his hat low. Stay with us, boss. Come through.</p><p>"Better you than some stranger."</p><p>He couldn't punch up the van. They had to get away cleanly.</p><p>"Motherfuckers."</p><p>Bepo gloved up and pulled out the stained beri bills then sanitised and applied salve where he could. They'd have to properly examine and treat him when they were safe. Fucking shittiest part of it was that they'd probably need the cash so he stopped Shachi from ripping the other bill into a thousand pieces. Just their bitter luck it was too wet to tear.</p><hr/><p>Law woke with a shudder and almost knocked Shachi out with an elbow to the face, his breathing a panicked lament.</p><p>He tried to pull the mask from his face.</p><p>"It's okay, Law," said Bepo holding his legs.</p><p>"Okay," said Shachi holding his hand. Pushing him back to the bed. "You're safe now. We'll be safe soon." He secured the mask.</p><p>Law looked around like an injured dog booted from the tyre of one fast moving car to the other, aiming to get to the sidewalk by running right into the heart of traffic. That bag still over his mouth. Couldn't breathe. Bright lights. Flares? Kid holding him down. Zoro, fucking, worming away inside of him. He shot up again.</p><p>Bepo prepared a sedative.</p><hr/><p>They changed cars. Smoker had set it up. Ikkaku, jumpsuit dripping in the rain, stood near a white corolla plated with registration from the neighbouring country. She pushed back the hair of the unconscious Law. Someone had to join Shachi in his tears. "Be good to him."</p><p>"Of course."</p><p>She drove the van back to the hospital, wiping the back of her wrist over her eyes, returned the keys, returned home, ready to start her shift in the morning.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>For Nightmare2, if you're still reading. Too little, too late? Maybe I should have tacked this on the end of the last chapter as first planned. Maybe not. Our boy will come through. Times are tough, so I thought I better get onto suturing reader wounds as soon as I could...the chapter might get a bit more heft to it, so pop back in if you feel like it.</p><p>BTW, I have very little knowledge on how crematoriums work, and I don't think most (any?) hospitals have them. But some do have incinerators for toxic waste.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. I'm not finished yet; I'm under construction</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I feel like I cheated Law of comfort in this fic, so have some.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It's a dark adult fic, you know the routine. Some reflection on recent past horrific abuse in this chapter, but not majorly, and it's not the overall theme. This is a comfort chapter.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>I'm not finished yet; I'm under construction</p><hr/><p>A shudder. A massive shudder. Law woke and shook and didn't stop.</p><p>Where was he? Blankets. Scratchy. A comfortable bed. Not too soft or hard, and that didn't mean a thing. Felt like a hospital bed. That also meant nothing. He'd been fucked on hospital beds more times than he could count. Was he back, hadn't got away? Had they got his crew?</p><p>Dark. A cell? Moonlight, runner lights, along the floor.…A glow from somewhere. A mask, a hand, Kid's forearm across his face, blocking his breath. Helping it.</p><p>How had they pulled him out of the moratorium? And why? Just so they could fuck him up beyond the incomprehensible? Last he knew he felt the earth move under him. Kid came, stuffed him with beri, threw the bag containing his body, sloshing with jizz, on the conveyer belt. The bag containing him, Law. Roronoa thinking he'd squeezed the life out of him.</p><p>Was it still there, the beri? Still inside? He tried to move his legs, to lean down, to tug it out.</p><p>Things clanked, brushed his skin. He was strapped to an IV and had a catheter, or they were strapped, tied, to him, in him.</p><p>He clawed the sheets and blankets from where they held down his body, kept him warm. To get away. To get that muck off his body. He hadn't sucked them off, couldn't with the metal of the zipper pressing into his face, so at least his throat wasn't coated in cum. Luffy's, yes, but he'd cried himself hoarse—coarse—in that sack, so he couldn't feel the remnants.</p><p>He wasn't chained, but that didn't mean anything either. He'd let them use him over and over and they rarely had to restrain him. Didn't even have to beat him most of the time. Made him ask for it. Ordered him to keep the schedule. And he did. He fucking did.</p><p>What did his parents think of him—Lami? That money would cause an infection if it wasn't removed, but he was in a hospital bed. Surely they'd done the basics? If they wanted to use him again, they'd have had to clean him out.</p><p>"Boss?" Brighter lights switched on, still at a night setting.</p><p>Voices, noise, like rain, like freaking petals on an opened umbrella. The wind kicking a can along streets slick with water. A rumble. Storm drains filling, flooding—water—ripping through embankments, throwing out handfuls of dirt, foundation and protection.</p><p>Was that his heart? That railway clack of speed and—man, he couldn't stop them. He twisted but could hardly move. Everything stung like a hand shoved into a nest of ants. The back of his head ached. Was that from Luffy's punch? It could be from anything, If they'd kept him alive, had they found Luffy? And if they had what did that mean for him?</p><p>They were already on top of him. Go figure—Kid's crew?—beside the bed, holding his arms down, pushing onto his chest. Tugging at the pillow under his neck, aiming to bring it over his face. They'd find that fun, fucking him with the down stretched over his head, pushing it against the mattress, Law inhaling feathers. What kind of hospital had down pillows? Just let them kill him for god's sake.</p><p>"Boss, it's the staff. Leave the staff alone."</p><p>Bepo, pulling someone aside. That someone holding their face. Blood. Had Law headbutted them? Couldn't be Bepo. Bepo wouldn't touch him. Must be...Kid musta told one of his crew to dress up like Bepo...maybe Luffy did. Where was Luffy? Maybe he could help him out of this. He always wanted Law's exclusive cuddles. Gave him a moment's rest to let him hold him, to hold him. No letting. Ordered him to hold him. Law did, and there <em>was</em> respite in it.</p><p>They thought he liked it, that he was into it, that this role outranked all others. Out-debased them. Under-classed them. Needed to tell themselves that. Outclassed the underclass. The untouchables. He was one of them. Funnily enough it gave them free rein to fuck him over ever which way.</p><p>Law tried to bring his legs together again but they wouldn't let him. Tried to breathe but there was cloth, canvas, over his mouth. He was swimming in canvas. Fake Bepo leant across him and pushed an arm against his chest and, god, Zoro Luffy Marco, someone had bruised his ribs there. Zoro cracking down into the bag after Kid had pulled out.</p><p>They wouldn't stop. He knew they wouldn't stop. Maybe they were pulling the beri out now so they could fuck him tonight, tomorrow, the night after. Escort him to the mortuary again, and he'd never know if they were feigning or not. There'd be a time when they wouldn't pause the conveyor belt. He slashed out at them. Ripped fake Bepo's skin. Tore at his shirt.</p><p>Maybe that time had already passed. This was his afterlife. It wouldn't surprise him. No rest for the wicked and, shit, sins were notched into every vertebra and he was gonna wail about it because there was no way out. Scream. Make some noise. Even if someone helped him they'd want to hurt him first.</p><p>A needle.</p><p>"Hold him down."</p><p>"Get. Fuc– Get <em>offa</em> me." The IV was out, the oxygen mask off, the cover on the floor, but the sedative worked through his veins, and even as Law fought for air and motion, his heart slowed, and the engine hummed, the mechanism clicked over, the conveyor-belt below him moved towards the furnace.</p><hr/>
<hr/><p>"Law? Boss?"</p><p>"Man, we gotta get him to breathe regularly."</p><p>"Keeps pulling the tubings out. The mask off."</p><hr/>
<hr/><p>Penguin sat by the bed and his heart dropped at the flinch that scissored Law's entire body, his urge to get away.</p><p>"Law." He didn't dare touch him but knew that maybe if he did, if he could, if he could hold his palm, Law would know he was safe. He was safe.</p><p>"We escaped. You escaped." Law looked across, mask secure, breath with the sharp edge of panic. "They're gone. We crossed the border." Light at the fringe of his eyes.</p><p>"Smoker helped." Penguin leant across and pushed Law's hair back. "Laurent Lee." Law didn't jerk his head away. "You're a free man, Laurent Lee."</p><p>Penguin wondered if Law knew he was crying.</p><p>"Pen," he said, marbled.</p><p>"Gwyn."</p><p>"Yeah, yeah...Pen-guin."</p><p>Penguin figured he'd get that a lot.</p><p>"I let them..." <em>But he couldn't stop them</em>. Law's thoughts rattled like change in a coin sorter.</p><p>Penguin observed the too rapid rise and fall of Law's chest. His inked hand above the bed covers clutched at the blanket.</p><p>"You're alive, Law...free..."</p><p>Those sounds, behind the mask, really ugly things. Law lashed out, looking for something to cling to, to reject. He connected with Penguin's arm, recognised the material, dug his fingers in.</p><p>"Hold on there, Cap," Penguin winced. That was going to be purple. Law stared at him but well past him, but he wasn't letting go.</p><p>"Body bag...they..."</p><p>Oh man. Fuck,<em>fuck</em>,fuck? What to do? The shakes returned, and Penguin eyed Law's body temperature. Normal. He tried to position his shirt so that more cloth got between him and his boss' grasp.</p><p>"They couldn't even see my face, my back. They fucked me like... canvas in my mout…everything blac...not even shapes." Captain hadn't cried like that even when he'd described the cold insides of the van, surrounded by corpses, trying to keep the one guy still with a heartbeat alive. "Just a hole."</p><p>Ripped and raw. Bawling. But he was. At least he was. His hand dropped back to the bed.</p><p>Law had told them when he'd staggered up to meet them, as fast as he could move, that there were a few minutes in which to get away.</p><p>He hadn't got away.</p><p>He'd told them about the bag. "They cut a hole. Prepared it. Know exactly where to position me." He was so angry and defiant and ashamed, he'd stared out the window rigid. It'd kill him if they rejected him. Shaking. Like now. But mobile.</p><p>He'd been bleeding and they were all on the back foot, but they'd promised to get him out of there, they would. And themselves.</p><p>Law hardly answered back under 'usual' circumstances, but with his face loose there was always the chance. Zipped up in a damn shroud that opportunity dwindled to zero.</p><p>It was obvious to Law now in this somewhere-that-was-who-knew-the-fuck-where?, that his worth was only as good as his shine, how shiny he was. Luffy's collectible. He'd certainly lost his lustre. Thank god if it meant less attention, but if less attention meant they could dispose of him after using him...fuck, there was no easy path. Where were they? Had he lost his shine? Was he so washed up they didn't want to come back for seconds? Kinda insulting, but<em>what was he thinking</em>…?</p><p>He drew a huge gasp of air, even behind the mask. Were they drugging him? Kid had more than enough. But he'd always liked him in some state of lolled back lucid.</p><p>"Law." Penguin sat on the side of the bed, "Calm down."</p><p>Penguin was able to take one of the hands now crabbed over the mask. "Calm down, boss. We're free. They're fucked but we're free."</p><p>Law's fingers dug into him again like talons. He kept them short for surgery, but Penguin thought he might break his wrist. He was definitely breaking the skin.</p><p>Penguin didn't think he could massage the hand to malleability, to connection. Law was stiff rather than thrashing, and neither was particularly good. If he couldn't get him to calm down he'd call in the old witch doctor. How did Smoker know her?</p><p>"It's shit, boss, it's hell what you went through. But come through, for us, please?"</p><p>Law's grasp weakened, and maybe even his tears. More of a tremble now than a shake.</p><p>"Pen?" The voice was thick like yolk, but unclear due to the cup of the plastic of the mask rather than the grief zig-zagging the room like pinking shears.</p><p>"Gwyn, Laurent," Penguin muttered. Law turned to one side, rattling all the drips and tubes. "You want company?"</p><p>Slight nod behind the mask. "Can we take this off?" Law jerked a thumb at his face.</p><p>"Yeah, I think it's okay," and Penguin knew the staff wouldn't like it, but eased it away from Law's face, the strap back over his hair. He gave out a few hurried gasps as his breathing adjusted to pulling in oxygen from the air. Penguin switched the machine off, noted where they'd had to cut and shave Law's hair a little to get at some of the cuts and bruises. It was slick with sweat, though Law's temperature still registered as normal.</p><p>Penguin placed the mask on the bedside table and crawled onto the bed and hoped that was what Law wanted. Didn't want to retraumatise him. Better that he talk him through it.</p><p>"I'm gonna lie beside you, boss. I think you want that?"</p><p>Law's eyes lost comprehension for a moment. <em>Was that a Luffy question? Of course it was a fucking Luffy question</em>. Penguin sighed and sat on the edge of the bed once more and took that hand again. Law squeezed it.</p><p>Penguin broke open a cooler swipe and patted it over Law's face.</p><p>"Ikkaku?"</p><p>"She's okay. Got us a car. You slept across the border. Smoker helped out. Man, you missed a beautiful sunrise."</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>Penguin nodded and wiped again. He was serious. The morning light through the spooky rocks of the spinifex-empty plateau really was something else. And while Law slept, they'd needed the few toilet stops they'd taken, to get out and stretch their legs, to check their map and reread Smoker's instructions.</p><p>"Lie here." Law touched the space beside him.</p><p>"I hardly know you," Penguin joked.</p><p>A shrug of a smile crossed Law's face. He looked up. He wouldn't ask again, but his eyes were roughspun.</p><p>Penguin kicked off the hospital slippers and lay in the bed next to his friend. Facing away from him, and he felt the tubing slice across his face as Law put an arm under his shoulder, Penguin lifting slightly, and then another arm across his chest, and then he felt Law bury his face into his back and it was soaked in no time.</p><p>A whispered iteration of sorry spilled against him. An iteration of being too weak to save himself and lead them and for needing Penguin now and to be using him in the most heinous way, imposing upon his good nature. It didn't matter the degree. Wasn't he doing to Penguin exactly what they'd done to him, only on a lesser scale?</p><p>He'd fallen asleep against Ace, Ace's arm around him, and he'd missed the opportunity to save him. What kind of surgeon was he? What kind of friend?</p><p>Penguin put his own hand across one of Law's tattoos, his own tears felt but not seen. "It's okay. It's okay boss. Let it out." And it wasn't but they were free.</p><p>Law retracted his hands and he clung to the back of Penguin's boilersuit like a baby monkey to its mother, and once the—yeah, it was unintelligible—Law trying to come to terms with, to explain, something that was beyond the imagination—once the curses and burbles and coughing and grazed-knee abrasion had quieted to an irregular breath that let him know Law's tears weren't done with yet, Penguin asked. Told.</p><p>"Boss?"</p><p>He took the pressure against his skin as an acknowledgement.</p><p>"Gonna turn around."</p><p>No response.</p><p>"Is it okay?"</p><p>Law drew patterns on his back. A deep intake of air, then, "Yeah."</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>Law just applied pressure again. He turned and Law had to readjust. He was close and he hoped that didn't spook him. "Not gonna hurt you."</p><p>"Shhh," Law said. Wished Penguin knew sign language like Bepo. The spoken word had so many snares.</p><p>Penguin slowly lifted his arms and Law moved closer and Penguin just as deliberately curled them around him.</p><p>"You hate this, you tell me, okay? You want out tap my chest twice. It's okay, tap it once."</p><p>"Only holding me right?" Law forced his body to relax.</p><p>"Of course."</p><p>Law tapped his chest once. "Let me turn around."</p><p>Penguin released him and Law settled, back against Penguin. It had to hurt. He stiffened—in pain?—before he turned again and settled again. But he did settle and they lay, Penguin on top of the blankets, Law still under them, tracking a crack on the hospital wall. But his breath was regular.</p><p>And.</p><p>Holy fuck.</p><p>Penguin gripped Law tighter, and there was a tight inhale and a tap on the back of Pen's hand so that he loosened his hold, but it didn't interrupt the strange keening, a cry of a pup lost, cut off from its family. It didn't interrupt the quiet and eerie song easing from Law's lips. A lullaby sung by sprites. They all knew it. The song of the miners of Flevance.</p><p>Law sang the first few lines to the white of the wall of the room, to that crack that came from where? and led to here. He paused.</p><p>"Stop? You want me too?"</p><p>Penguin shook his head. He couldn't speak. He tapped Law's back once.</p><p>"My sister?" Law said. "Remember I talked about her? We'd sing this together. It helped her sleep. Amber lead poisoning, it's so painful. It took her mind off it."</p><p>Penguin tapped again.</p><p>Law continued with the next verse and Penguin joined in thinking of his family now burnt to dust. And that attracted Bepo and Shachi, just walking down the corridor to take over from their mate. They pushed the door open, curious, and Law, seemed semi-lucid perhaps, at least conscious, lying with Penguin's arm wrapped around him and eyes closed and singing the tune they'd learned in school and on the playgrounds, and Penguin matched it, and before Bepo knew what he was doing, his deeper voice slotted in with Shachi's, though Shachi was flat. And it was hushed and beautiful and worked its way through the corridors of mourning and release and healing.</p><p>"Safe now boss," Bepo said, once it was finished, the three men having gone in for round two, Law seemingly having fallen asleep, and Shachi reached across and straightened the tubings so they weren't pulled out or blocked.</p><p>Penguin unwrapped himself and softly retreated from the bed, Law falling onto his back, arms wide in a way that he sometimes did when he'd occasionally been allowed to crash at one of their pads, but in a way Penguin had never witnessed when Law had been hospitalised, not at the last place of employment nor this one.</p><p>He slipped the four pieces of the jigsaw that Law had given him into a small bag that contained his passport and other important documents just to the side of the bed. Penguin, Shachi, Bepo, Law. Free.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The song list that the chapter titles are based on is in chapter 13, I think. But as this is an addition, I'll put it here. Mostly for the beautiful way Tanya Donnelly sings <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtH4bn3MTKA">The Storm</a>. But the lyrics kinda fit too.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. waiting on an angel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>No warnings.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Have at it. Healing themes for darker times?</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>chapter 12—waiting on an angel</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>Professor Lee had a fondness for flowers, those he grew himself. Trumpets and vines and moss and floating lilies cascaded the walls and trellises and ponds of his yard.</p><p>Students admired the arrangements in his office. They joked that he conversed with the flowers more than he did with them. One week it was minimalist shoots from a plum tree, tasteful dark red and pink late-winter buds peeling back on a black stand. Next month, fleshy leaves and carnations like herring rolled in brine, stardust white pressed across them. His office was messy, but welcoming. Peaceful.</p><p>His door was always open, even when busy.</p>
<hr/><p>Ace sat opposite. A pile of pens gathered on the desktop.  Law stole everyone's without realising it. A pen was always needed. He'd take them home, empty his pockets, and never have one for the office. Except today. He'd remembered to bring a handful back. Regardless, he patted his shirt and looked around the table before he spied the disarray he'd dumped that morning and hadn't bothered to tidy yet. Not being held accountable for every strand of hair pushing through his skin was like the day stirring.</p>
<hr/><p>"Laurent?" The student knocked on the door. Law looked up. He asked the students to call him by his new given name—easier to respond to than the new family name*, and he'd never been much of one for hierarchy.</p><p>Even so, he forced himself to walk down the middle of the hallways of the university on the way to class, to faculty meetings, or just when popping out to purchase a drink from the vending machine. Trailing the wall, despite its germs and grimes, was tempting.</p><p>Locking his door, he'd breathe deeply and stride out. The crowds surging from one class to the next parted as he cut through them. With respect from either side of course. He'd earned that respect and no-one should ever have to feel they had to cling to a wall to invoke invisibility, avoid attention.</p><p>The card Ace had provided was stocked with a small amount of money. The two countries shared a currency. Smoker deposited some more until he'd got on his feet. Slipping a few beri into the vending machine, listening to the coins fall—knowing no arbitrary tally hung over his head, knowing he didn't have to justify any purchase—brought a snippet of a grin to Law's face.</p><p>He tipped his head back, eyes closed, hair spiked and a little damp in the rising humidity. He rolled the can over his forehead. Cool. Breathing was easy. In the side store, the cashier nodded at the softness crossing his usually impassive—but polite—expression. Must really like sweet drinks.</p><p>The students thought he was straight-laced, even wearing long-sleeved button downs in the warmer weather, and a three-quarter length rashie when swimming. Was there any point in covering up? The tattoos on the back of his hands couldn't be disguised without some serious grafting.</p><p>He'd loosen up when he felt safer. As far as anyone but Smoker and Ikkaku knew he was dead, but that was true only as long as no-one he knew crossed the border. It depended on how far any reputation of his skill spread, although he wasn't practicing anymore, so there was that.</p>
<hr/><p>"Can I close the door, Professor?"</p><p>Drawn in on herself, pinched lips, the student was upset, but a closed door could be trouble for him from many quarters.</p><p>He indicated the couch and two chairs around a low table in a space to her right, his left, instead. He walked across the room and flicked the switch to the kettle, prepared tea.</p><p>"If you sit here," he pointed to the seat opposite from where he intended to, "your back'll be to the door, and they'll only see me chatting to myself when they walk past."</p><p>It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was a solution. She nodded. Dr. Trafalgar crazily muttering to himself wasn't such a stretch, considering the conversations he held with the flowers, and it was preferable to passing students seeing her distress.</p><p>"Please, understand it protects us both." He didn't talk about his complicated relationship with doors, locks, and if they were shut or not. Whether others had access to them or not. Only he had the pass to his office, though perhaps a key was with security. He hoped to god they could be trusted.</p><p>She startled.</p><p>"No." He swept a hand over his head. She eyed the earrings, the finger tats. He was quite the professor for their small province. "It's just best to balance proprietary at university. Anywhere. I wouldn't hurt anyone."</p><p>He tried a quick smile but knew how little assurance those words and gestures could give.</p><p>"Ever."</p><p>He pointed to the chair, and hoped that she'd get it one day. He'd been marked by death, for sure. By his own hand, choosing to ink his fingers, and marked from too many other randoms and motherfuckers to count. He switched off the kettle, filled a pot, brought it and two cups to the table. Sat and poured a weak green tea.</p><p>A break-up. Heartbreak was heartbreak. She needed an extension, an excused absence for the next class. So long as students communicated, he said, it was fine. A new deadline set and he told her to get in touch if needed.</p>
<hr/><p>The school was pleased with the feedback the young professor received, and his ability to lay low. He was on the quiet side, but even in his first year, his graduating students had gone on to win prizes. Winners or not, all worked well, cooperated, set up volunteer groups, helped out at medical centres. Those not taught by him thought Professor Lee was strict and fierce. Those in his classes loved him. Were exasperated when he pocketed their pencils and pens after highlighting a point on their papers. Nervous of letting him and their classmates down when they'd failed to do required coursework.</p><p>He stood firm if staff needed support in faculty meetings, but mostly went with the flow. Took on the extra work they asked him too. Mentored those who requested it. But didn't let them use all of his time, all of his knowledge.</p>
<hr/><p>"Able to unknot your own tie now?"</p><p>Law nodded. He'd worn one today, but didn't usually.</p><p>He flexed his hand, and loosened the tie instead of tightening it.</p><p>"You free, Law?"</p><p>"Laurent," Law laughed. "Thanks for telling Smoker."</p><p>Ace faded before he could ask more. Was he doing okay wherever he was? Had he met his mother? Were things better? Had Law's own relatives found new life to connect with, to be with, to be? He wished Ace would stay a bit longer the next time he appeared so he could ask, so he'd know.</p>
<hr/><p>Luffy never visited with Ace. Individually was another matter.</p><p>The first time, Law had to stay with Bepo for the night. Luffy had sat there. All scarred and burnt up, but with that fathead smirk promising that Law would always belong to him. It was fate. Inevitable. No point in resisting. They'd never be separated. Luffy rubbed at that strawhat tattoo on his inner wrist. Somehow it survived the furnace. The peeling skin, and subcutaneous tissue blackened and charred. That deep. Luffy's stare was encased in all of that, and followed Law as he ran to the sink to throw up. When he looked back to the desk, the apparition had vanished.</p><p>How could he be so goddamned arrogant, so entitled, so possessive in death? In haunting? Law had sunk his goddamn motherfucking fingers into that flesh and the imprints glowed like some kind of accusation of <em>his</em> cruelty, of Law's cruelty, even against the burns. Law had gone through all he had, and he still wasn't free?</p>
<hr/><p>"Ace?"</p><p>Fire Fist sat across from him, playing with the flowers. He picked up the small blossoms that grew like rubbery stars, and flicked them off their stems. How did a ghost do that?</p><p>"Why's Luffy come visit me? Why not hang out with you?"</p><p>Ace tipped a handful of blooms between his palms and back. "You're bright and shiny, Law."</p><p>Law glanced at his flattened thumb tip. His crew had been able to draw the skin up and over, but didn't have the time nor the right set of circumstances or tools to get it properly sutured. More like flat and misshapen. Smooth though. The skin did shine.</p><p>"His descriptions were more along the lines of worm-riddled and pustule-laden." Law hoped Ace didn't destroy all of his arrangement.</p><p>"He never said pustule."</p><p>"Nah," Law grinned. Luffy prided himself on his clear judgement of character, and a good vocabulary didn't hold much weight. Law didn't blame him. Words were just words, but man, some stung a whole lot more than others.</p><p>Ace dissolved.</p>
<hr/><p>"D'ja kill him?"</p><p>Law nodded. The vase whizzed past his head, fell to the floor, smashing and scattering flowers all over it. Man, he'd have to clean that up. He'd spent ages arranging that one.</p><p>"When'd you get the ability to move objects?"</p><p>"Been working on it."</p><p>A student passed by. Doctor Lee sure was weird, but was a good teacher. Had time for them. It was a professor's prerogative to talk to his plants, he guessed.</p>
<hr/><p>"I mean, I get that he would have killed you, the way things were going, but he's my little brother, y'know."</p><p>"Yeah," Law nodded. "Believe me when I say sorry that it is for <em>your</em> loss."</p><p>"No regrets over killing him?"</p><p>Law placed an ankle over his knee, pressed down on his leg, leant forward. "None. I was still fucking breathing, Ace. They were gonna burn me alive. Luffy was dead, I promise you, well before. When we switched, he was a corpse."</p><p>Ace didn't have any of the flower arrangement to play with. Law hadn't replaced it yet. Maybe he could pierce him with a pen.</p><p>"Why didn't you do it earlier, try to off him earlier?"</p><p>Law wished the window was in front of him instead of behind him. He needed some far off horizon to vague out to. Why not indeed?  He drew in a breath. "Surgeries scheduled. If I wasn't in attendance, there was a real chance the patients wouldn't have survived." His crew. His medical training. Not the stuff they put him through and called training.</p><p>Law glanced at the just-remembered pen between his fingers. Wished it was a scalpel. He loved his profession.</p><p>"And he had my passport." Wove the pen between his digits. He stared back up at Ace. Tucked it behind his ear. "Thanks for getting me the replacement."</p><p>A janitor swishing a mop along the hallway swore he saw the chair Doctor Lee talked to move a little.</p><p>"It was stupid that I had to go and die."</p><p>Law nodded. "Probably would've saved me a whole lot of getting fucked over if I'd realised it was hidden in the drawer earlier."</p><p>Ace shrugged. What could he do?</p>
<hr/><p>"Body bag?"</p><p>"Yeah. Got Roronoa hard."</p><p>"Ah man, they did that to you?"</p><p>That session finished early. Law couldn't hold it together, and Ace's touch, though welcome, was ghostly cold.</p>
<hr/><p>"But it was the only way to effectively get away. They had to have ashes. A corpse." He'd been a whore, after all. Even if it wasn't by his choosing.</p><p>Sometimes Law couldn't look at Ace. It was a relief when he raised his face again and he was still there. Other times he sat back in frustration at the empty seat opposite.</p><p>"Sorry, Ace, that it was your brother."</p><p>"Couldn't you have used a dog? An animal?"</p><p>"A dog's never even flattened its ears at me."</p>
<hr/><p>"Got the lowdown."</p><p>"You met him?"</p><p>"Yeah. Gnarly, man. Nice clean break to the neck though."</p><p>Law shrugged. He was renowned for precision.</p><p>"Came to you first cos you were his last contact. He's all anger," Ace said, tapped his temple, "but not all there. Maybe because of how he died." He lifted his hat with a knuckle and scratched at his hair. "Luff's always been open to suggestion. He's baying for blood, in search of a soul or two. Doesn't matter who. Keen to smash a few pots and pans together. Point him in the right direction and he'll zero in. I'm sure his crew miss him.” </p><p>"Why go after them, not me?""</p><p>"I won't let him," Ace said. Law had kept Luffy alive while Ace was still breathing. He'd aim to keep Law healthily alive now that Luffy and himself were not. He had more power in death than he'd had in life. He'd make good use of it.

</p>
<hr/><p>Zoro laughed when Marco told him about the ghostly, very loud, apparition that sat at the end of the bed staring at him. Until he noted the indentation in his own covers the following day, and then the nightmares piled in one after the other.</p><p>Where <em>had</em> Luffy gone? He'd just left. No struggle apparent. He'd disappeared the evening they'd got rid of that waste of space—fishing trip with Shanks or something perhaps—and Law's crew had vanished too.</p><p>He guessed the Hearts had upped and run. How they got wind of it he didn't know, but without Law's protection, without him as proxy-prostitute, they were vulnerable. More vulnerable. And with Luffy's absence, their visas and work records would be under scrutiny from any replacement. Vivi was angling for the job. Had no love lost for the White Spots.</p><p>The worst for Zoro was one night, and he was sure he did it to himself, but the sheet covered him from head to toe, like a mourning shroud, with a twist at his crown. And he couldn't breathe because the sheet was shoved into his mouth, dipping in and out as if someone's fingers were curled into his lips, someone's cold embrace pressed against his body, a weight on top of him. He had no control. Couldn't see. Couldn't breathe.</p>
<hr/><p>It took a fair bit to spook Kid, and Killer didn't believe in ghosts, but man if a mutilated Luffy didn't keep appearing in his dreams, and there was that morning he woke choking and pulled a beri note from his mouth. What was that about? Skanky fucking thing that hadn't been anywhere decent. He'd sent Law off with currency in the best of faith, and this was how he repaid him from the other side? Ungrateful to beyond the last. He pulled open a drawer next to the bed, ratting about for the sutra bracelet his gran had given him long ago.</p>
<hr/><p>Driving along, and damn it if that didn't feel like that whore (good riddance he was no longer a blight on their days) with his sinful lips nudging where no decent god-fearing man dared go. Killer missed the perks of the job even if he didn't miss that excuse for a human. He looked down and his head flew forward and back as he slammed into the vehicle in front of him. The boot crumpled in and up on impact. His car's bonnet buckled.</p><p>Burnt Luffy, pustuled Luffy, acting like a literal devouring was on the menu, crouched on the floor of the car, nibbling at his jeans over his cock. <em>Shishishishi</em>. Killer told the attending officer he'd had a hallucinatory episode which lead to a raid on the club, which lead the team to actual hallucinogens and other very undercover activities, like the new slave trade.</p>
<hr/><p>"I know a ghost is not really a reliable source," said Big News Morgans, sharing a cigar with Smoker. "But you get your scoops where you can. You know his whereabouts? That Luffy kid?"</p>
<hr/><p>"We want you to appear at the trial."</p><p>Smoker's jacket hung over the back of the chair. Passing students wondered if Professor Lee would let him light up those cigars. It was against university policy, but he seemed important. Was Laurent in trouble, or did he know people in high places?</p><p>"Can't do it." Law didn't drop his gaze. Doodled without focusing on a piece of paper. X, over and over.</p><p>Smoker admired the arrangement to the side of the desk. The only clear space. Two long variegated gold and yellow leaves spiked upwards. It would hurt to brush against them. One of those white elephant trunk flowers blared at the front, surrounded by deep green foliage of another plant. Smaller stems, the flowers leaning to fruit, stood in the gaps between the taller leaves. Damned if he knew the name of any of them, but it was pretty to the eye.</p><p>The fact no pens were to be seen, except in Law's top pocket and hand, suggested he might be on the mend. The brutalised generally revved cortisol-high, not knowing how to pare down stress response, but Law was a doctor and must have his methods. Yes, he looked tired. Yes, he was discussing things he didn't want to remember.</p><p>But he could buy his own clothes, arrange ikebana, keep to himself because he wanted to, not because it was expected.</p><p>Law wasn't going to give up that freedom for anything. He couldn't appear at any trial against Kid and the hospital. Not in one-hundred-thousand years. He'd be evicted from this country, this job. Would have to stand in court and face all of them, and recount everything, and wouldn't know his future again. If he'd even have one. The way his luck went he'd find himself in one of those piss-riddled cells, or sent off to internment for the stateless.</p><p>And if Kid got off, knowing he was still alive? Zoro? Marco?</p><p>Yellow pollen drifted to the desk surface.</p><p>"Do you know what happened to Luffy?" Smoker asked.</p><p>"No clue."</p><p>"Worried he'll come out and track you down?"</p><p>"Not for a second."</p>
<hr/><p>Vivi had been part of the aftercare, and occasionally the instigation, but—although she'd humiliated Law, sometimes physically, she'd never violated him in the same way as the others.</p><p>Still, the ladies of the van took to wearing gloves again. The money Vivi handed over for her morning coffee, or midday focaccia, was almost septic. And she was at the frontline of the hospital. What was she thinking that she emulated that creepy Doctor Trafalgar?</p>
<hr/><p>Law didn't mind going out solo. Had always been comfortable with his own company, but his crew understood the staring for minutes at nothing, that sometimes he wouldn't even know he was crying.</p><p>He kept it together in the classes he taught, in the meetings, but now and then he'd sit at theirs, spaghetti twirled and forgotten, tears rolling down his face. They didn't know if it was worse or better if he then lifted a portion to his mouth.</p><p>Bepo took him to the couch then, curled around him, and Law leant into him, face turned from them. And they'd all watch the TV or finish their meals, or just end up letting the two sleep until Law could stretch out and feel that the air around him wasn't virulent but virile. Penguin or Shachi draped a blanket over the them if needed.</p><p>They admired that Law distinguished good cop from bad, but he froze at times when he saw a uniform, and though he lived and breathed medicine, had yet to tread a foot in the local hospital, their corridors and hidden corners too full of curves and darkness. He'd need to at some time, given his students, but not yet.</p><p>The Hearts understood when he disappeared on breaks to hike for miles and camp in the open, though they insisted he take a phone with him, and that he answer their texts. He answered every third, or sent them pictures of fronds and birds unbidden. The creek, the sky. Sometimes he'd record an old crow calling out in the tree. They ribbed him for it. There were a million birdsongs and he chose the crows. But it was still fresh. He inhaled as much open space as needed.</p><p>Shachi started going out with someone from admin, and Penguin kickstarted his own business. And they were all lucky this country shared a language with their training, because Bepo secured a position in speech therapy and was able to sign away to his heart's content for the few students who needed it or wanted it.</p>
<hr/><p>—Okay?</p><p>—Don't think... Law faltered, —never.</p><p>—Never Okay?</p><p>—I'll never be Okay.</p><p>—sad.</p><p>Law shook his head. He spoke, to his silent bear of a friend. "I'm grateful, Bepo. I'm alive. Ace isn't. My mother and father, my sister aren't. The guy who taught me how to sign."</p><p>He signed —the people in the truck.</p><p>At some point of nearly every day it was more than he could bear, more than anyone could, but all those souls were riding on him, in him, residing. Heavy, crushing. Was he a corpse that had escaped? Had died but was somehow left alive?</p><p>Kid hadn't let him have a garden and there'd been no time anyway, in between servicing everyone and surgical procedures—struggling to recover. But he made himself dig the soil, smell the earth, plant the seeds. Watched the shoots push through the ground. Not all made it. There were snails, frostbite, Law's own carelessness as he trod on one or another. Insects, slugs.</p><p>And the ones that survived went through their cycle, and sometimes that was all they had for that life, but that was their life. Others surprised him. Pushing up from underground the next year and the one after. Their sudden gifts of flowers and fruit and bounty relaxed him like glimpsing a new moon in the sky.</p><p>He always gave thanks. On his darkest nights, even now, he <em>never</em> had an urge to uproot the chrysanthemum and succulents that coloured his yard. To scratch his name into the bark of a tree a few hundred years older than himself.</p><p>He rested back against them on his hikes or in his yard, and tried to hear, and breathe, and believe. The make-up for chlorophyll and haemoglobin shared the same elements circling around different chemicals. One transported oxygen, the other smoothed circulation and cleansed the body. Leaves fell as winds blew. Law pulled at the grass. Slept, read, stared. Bark littered the ground. He picked at strips, beautiful in crispness, edges soft. Restrictive on the trunks with loss of elasticity, they had to be shed. The inner cambium layer quickly healed as trees grew wider and taller. A thickened skin discarded, and grown again.</p>
<hr/>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*I stuffed up a little. If keeping with One Piece naming conventions, I should have Law's new name as Lee Laurent, but I forgot.</p><p>Thank you for reading. I don't know if it was the ending readers wanted. Maybe not dark enough for the dark readers and not light enough for folks wanting it to end on an upswing. I hope it worked for you.</p><p>Take note that social distancing was not a thing apparent in this world, so Law was very safe when Bepo hugged him.</p><p>Take care out there.</p><hr/><p>Oh—the song titles, but be careful, some can be triggering (particularly old boiler):</p><p>Chapters 1, 2 &amp; 3, Hard Day's Night: The Beatles<br/>Chapter 4: Pirate Jenny: Nina Simone<br/>Chapter 5 &amp; 6: Excuse me Mister: Ben Harper<br/>Chapter 7: Before you Accuse Me: Eric Clapton<br/>Chapter 8: Animal: Nine Inch Nails <b>(TW)</b><br/>Chapter 10: The Boiler: Rhoda Dakar with The Special AKA (The Specials) <b>(huge TW)</b><br/>Chapter 11: Band on the Run: Paul McCartney &amp; Wings<br/>Chapter 12: Waiting on an Angel: Ben Harper.</p><p>Don't worry too much about the deeper lyrics for chapter 12. Law is literally waiting for the times that Ace pops up and in general, solace. But he's working towards that, rather than waiting. Might delete all that palaver above later.</p><hr/><p>PS: I haven't read <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39328584-greenwood">Greenwood</a></i>, but the similarities between haemoglobin and chlorophyl are outlined in it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>How did Luffy die?</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Spoilers and warnings</b>: Some folks wanted to see what happened to Zoro and co, and what happened to Luffy. To show you what happened to Luffy I gotta show you what happened to Law (well, I don't really, but it's a whump fic). The story ends well, but avoid the text in between the third and fourth section-break if sexual assault is a trigger. Or hit the back button. This is a dark story with some glimmers of hope and it's tagged and comes with its own set of trigger warnings, please take note of them.</p><p>The story is as coherent finishing with chapter 13, so stay there if that is your safe space. Take care of yourselves.</p><hr/><p><b>January 29, 2020</b>: I've just added a comfort chapter at chapter 12, because Law never got enough in this fic. If you're still reading or invested in this fic, pop back to 12. That's where the new stuff's at.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>epilogue</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>The surgeon usually wasn't so bloody when he left an operation, as strict as he was about scrubbing up and down, but he was unstable and had to be kept in line and sometimes foreigners just didn't understand.</p><p>The nursing staff assumed, as he hurried through the halls, taking the lift to the fourth floor to the staff cafeteria—and where Law's own crew often hung out—that he'd been caught red-handed doing something stupid and paid the price. You couldn't really say that one nationality was less intelligent than the other, but the Flevance pack never seemed to get it right.</p><p>Matted in parts, sticking up in others, his hair was a mess and when he ran a hand under a runny nose it left a streak of red on his face. His shirt sleeve was covered in blood. Panels uneven, buttons in the wrong holes. Was he trying to get away from someone? Should they stop him? He was an illegal, wasn't he?</p><p>Not worth it. Roronoa was due to see him soon for one-on-one counselling so he'd be reined in. They'd give him wide berth until then.</p>
<hr/><p>"Captain?" Shachi was by his side. Penguin and Bepo rose too. Law shrugged them off as they tried to prise his clothes away from the cuts and damage they knew lay underneath, that they could see. He was wide-eyed and had an anodised tang to him like water through rusted pipes. The sun was late-afternoon-soft across the room's tables and floor.</p><p>"Boss, sit down," Bepo said, taking his arm gently, trying to lead him to a chair. Law blinked into the light and shook his head, wouldn't budge. Knew he had to get out of there before Zoro fulfilled his daily rape rendezvous.</p><p>"Gonna kill me. Gonna fucking do it." Law ran a bloodied arm back across his face and picked at the glasses in his pocket. If he could get away he'd have to remember to wear them to match the photo in the passport.</p>
<hr/><p>He hadn't planned on losing part of his finger, but then again, he hadn't planned on being a whore, or on seeing his last day out in a body bag while he was still fucking breathing. Zoro dragged his face across the wall and Marco came from behind, and if he could somehow get back to his office, had to get to his office.</p><p>"Why're you on this floor, fucktard?" Zoro kicked him above the knee. It buckled. Law slumped. "Luffy told you where to wait." And Law always did, like a good little boy. Even when the boss had to pack up and leave in order to make his next meeting.</p><p>Law pressed his hands, thumb bleeding, flat against the wall behind him. Pushed himself up.</p><p>"Luffy finished early. Had to brief the boys."</p><p>Zoro crowded right in, all puffed-up sparrow, one eye, then the other darting over him. "You haven't got any surgeries for tomorrow or the day after or after that." He breathed—upwards—into his face to see the flinch. Noodled Law's sternum with his pointer.</p><p>"Useless fucking twat." Marco moved in, yanked his arm behind him. "Chopper's taken over your duties."</p><p>Blood blurred Law's vision. Not cascading, but trickle-enough to make the hallway appear as if the night lighting was on.</p><p>"You've served your purpose, Law," both men pushed him towards the stairs. "Useless. You're worthless to us now." Zoro tugged at his misaligned shirt. "You've let yourself go. But we're taking pity on you. Got a real treat lined up for today."</p>
<hr/><p>The canvas bag shrugged along the mortuary slab, stopped then started again. A steady beat and rustle. A smack and slap of tissue and flesh—balls pummelling fat and muscle. Push, pull, lips bared back and pressed together. Gruffs of pleasure. The strange humping of the canvas slug quickened, intensified.</p><p>"Yeah, like that. Put your legs like that." An arm jutted from the bag—through the gap from an unzipped fastener—to hoist a bended knee a little closer, more snugly against the owner's hips. Should've got a towel or something to put under Law's coccyx for elevation.</p><p>The end of the canvas lifted a little off the table as both knees brushed against the cloth. Tight, tanned glutes poked out from the opening, dipped down again. Bobbed up and down in a way that would've been comical if it wasn't so primal.</p><p>Pursuit of reward. Luffy owned the man flat against the table top under him. Flat with legs wide and a little raised.</p><p>"You can touch yourself. Touch yourself."</p><p>A few words wafted from the cloaked head of the bag. A complaint? Luffy dipped his head under cover and smothered the source, Torao's mouth. Luffy's tongue traced his upper gum line, the doctor's head lifting to meet him.</p><p>There really wasn't that much room. It was intense fucking Torao in the body bag. Both of them cosy. Too much coffee drunk from the doctor, but the rank scent was part of it. Law all skin, and the cloth that ensconced them rubbed above Luffy and below Law and the heat raised a few droplets of sweat on the side of his neck.</p><p>Rank. Yep. Definitely on his way out, this guy.</p><p>Luffy had a meeting in a half hour or so, so he'd tugged his trousers to the tops of his knees, and kept his shirt on, and got right down to business. Had been dreaming about this the whole day. Didn't know how dirty the floor or the tabletop or the bag was. One of the advantages of constantly having Law under him. Who better to use as protection from contamination than the contaminated? Came running when he'd called him—as keen and kinky as his tormenters, his <em>superiors</em>, were.</p><p>It was a blast. Lived up to every expectation he'd had. Law being taller was basically hooded, but they hadn't zipped the bag up. Wouldn't have made any sense. With a rush and a shudder Luffy came in Law, let out a huge whoop and collapsed on his chest with a contented grin. He waved his bare feet against the cloth, jerked a few more times, thrusting from the hips, still inside. Felt so good. His sharp bones against the doc's were awesome. Pebbles smooth in a creek bed. Peas in a pod. He breathed in deeply, out again, in, and then a huge gust out.</p><p>"Torao?"</p><p>Law patted his hair, his head, the way he liked. Luffy pushed into the touch. Torao always took a while to get his breath back too, and he really wasn't supposed to speak unless he was spoken to.</p><p>"Would ya die for me?" Luffy whispered into the beautiful tattoo. Beautiful foreign tattoo. This was the hospital version of canoodling on a picnic rug.</p><p>"Wouldja?" he repeated and ran the flat of his hand across Law's abs, traced the tattoo. "I mean, I guess you would."</p><p>Silence. Law's breath faster than it should be. He'd only had to spread his legs and lie back there. Luffy had done all the work, not that he minded. But he should've calmed down by now. What was taking so long? Speak when he was spoken to, and Luffy had spoken. He could be stupidly stubborn at times.</p><p>Luffy looked up at his shadowed face. Hadn't they scrubbed that bewildered fucking expression from it over the last few weeks? What was it doing back?</p><p>"See where we are." Luffy nibbled on a nipple, and pulled out of Law with a squelch. Felt him resist the urge to bring his thighs together. He wasn't allowed.</p><p>"Turn to your side."</p><p>Law did, shuffling back a little in the confined space. Luffy felt the warmth and wet of sperm between them as he also moved. Maybe the whore had touched himself. His cock certainly wasn't dry.</p><p>"I can work miracles." Luffy pushed up close into Law's front, and Law pulled him a little nearer, under his arm. "All you've got to do is believe in me, and do you?" He brushed his lips across Law's chest. "Believe in me?"</p><p>Law put both arms around the lithe, wiry kid and pulled him right to him so he'd stop talking for a while. The weight of the patients had steadily increased over the years and the hospital had some large fucking body bags, but Law didn't need reminding of how many close calls he'd had. There were only a few strands separating him from this life and the next. Maybe this was the final one. They wanted him to agree to his own extinction? He kissed Luffy's hair, his head. It excused him from speaking. Gave him a few seconds to try and process.</p><p>"We'll meet Zoro down here."</p><p>Law forced his fingers not to tighten, though Luffy was observant enough to track the pulse of his heart.</p><p>"He's got great plans for you. Did you like the bag you saw? The one I showed you? We prepared it last night." Luffy rubbed his cheek against Law's chest. "I gotta get to that meeting, but it's kinda nice to be all comfy here like this with you." He let out a quiet laugh. "But the other bag. Sick man. Can you imagine?" Snickered.</p><p>Law blinked. Only too fucking well. The morgue lights were dull when not in technical use. The room spare and bare and empty, filled only with the dead. None at the moment.</p><p>"You're so good, you've come so far." Luffy lifted a lazy arm to pat at Law's shoulder. He breathed a contended sigh against his skin and started to fall asleep. "It's the right decision, Torao. To die for me. You won't be sorry. Sabo. Sabo and Ace died instead of you, because of you, so it's only fair."</p><p>Luffy had pulled his trousers up part way, and Law tugged them further from the waistband so they were sitting low on his buttocks.</p><p>"Isn't it?"</p><p>"Mmm," Law said. "Sleeping?" he murmured against the director's crown, his saviour's crown.</p><p>"Yeah. So nice, Torao. Sleeping with you is so nice."</p><p>"You'll want to be comfortable."</p><p>Luffy lifted his hips so Law could secure the trousers better. He took such good care of him. Law watched the happy-go-lucky grin slacken into slumber. He reached into the back pocket of Luffy's pants. He was always so goddamned fucking handsy when he crowded Law against the desk, the wall, into the corner—when he summoned him—that he paid no attention to what Law was doing so long as it was some kinda form of getting naked.</p><p>His fingers curled over the tiny plastic syringe like a last chance. He'd slipped it into Luffy's back pocket before the shit had demanded Law strip and helped him strip. All the while slobbering up and down his neck and front, and expecting Law to return peppered kisses with the same attention and appreciation. Pawing at his crotch, turning him around and stretching him wide like some animal up for barnyard inspection.</p><p>"You're affectionate today, Torao," Luffy drawled in the heat of the bag. Pushed his arse upwards at Law's touch. "Like it."</p><p>"Special day," Law said. After all, he didn't want his last day on earth to be a howl of pain and misery. You had to make the best of a bad lot. Maybe it would be a relief to die.</p><p>They let him know so often how much fun it was to test out new ideas on him, that he knew his usual abnormal was about to be eclipsed when Luffy texted, ordering him to the morgue.</p><p>Sitting in his office, staring at the ceiling, at that abstract, he'd been waiting, as told, twirling his chair from side to side. After the call he dipped into his emergency supplies. Luffy liked him to prepare at times.</p><p>Steady does it. He drew the small needle, to him, primed it. Luffy mumbled happily against him. Pushed his warm and wet cock, still loose of his trousers, against the toastiness of Law's thighs. There was half an hour until his meeting. This was so pleasant. He felt all the stress leave his shoulders. Not that he got too tense, but Law was a great stress-reliever when he did. He ran a tight ship, and everyone had their role.</p><p>Law grabbed one of Luffy's buttocks to keep him steady and quickly jabbed the needle into the side of the neck exactly where it would have the most effect. The kid jerked immediately into action. Law stilled. Couldn't still. Needed to move.</p><p>"The fuck, Trafalgar!"</p><p>So he was capable of saying his name. Law dropped the syringe to the floor through the opening.</p><p>Luffy raised himself, pushed Law down from his side onto his back, and cupped that traitorous neck, his elbow free from the unzipped fastener of the bag, and raised a fist and no-one was stronger than him no matter how scrawny he was. Yeah, fucker, your breath better be like the irregular pulses of a scared little birdie. He slammed Law's head right back into the metal tabletop, and a flutter of darkness haloed his periphery. Luffy pulled his arm back again.</p><p>"You never fucking learn. No matter how nicely we treat you." He wound this one up. He'd led Law right to the line of the greatest honour. If the doc couldn't follow his dreams, what was the point of being alive? Law's dream was medicine, the rest was a misery, and Luffy was all about liberating the oppressed from their suffering. And Law had fucking enjoyed it. Those groans. The pre-cum. He'd practically composed an ode to his joy.</p><p>Head twisted to the side as Luffy's grip slackened, the director fell on top of Law, his fist pounding the table with a metallic ring. Collapsed. Drooling against the doctor's skin. Thank god he'd withdrawn.</p><p>Law shook himself conscious and shook away the creep and disgust from his current sentient experience of being well and truly fucked and fucked up, and placed his fingers either side of Luffy's neck. The kid was wide on his chest like so many times before in a belief that Law wouldn't fight back, or that he'd control him if he did, and why would he need to? It was a privilege to be chosen.</p><p>Law squeezed and then snapped. Clearly, efficiently. He was weakened but tried to keep up strength. He didn't operate solely. He had to move patients at times, restrain them, reposition them, assist them. Some heavy bastards out there.</p><p>Would Law die for him? Not if he could fucking help it. But he'd have no choice if Roronoa and the others found him down here. He rolled Luffy off him, but not onto the floor. Close there for a minute. Felt the director's soft, still sticky, dick brush against his thighs. He'd thought they were both going to tip over. Getting out was about as easy as exiting a sleeping bag with a jammed fastener, but he wiggled past Luffy and managed.</p><p>The metal was cold under his arse as he sat on the table for a second to gain his bearings, heart tattoo <em>and </em>heart contracting. A bubble of curses flowed under his breath, had to keep that in check. The linoleum floor was tacky under his feet as he dropped and walked across it.</p><p>Covered in Luffy's spunk, he threw his clothes on as quickly as he could, adrenaline pushing him through any pain and shock, but he buttoned up his shirt unevenly, and Luff's punch had drawn blood. It dropped onto the shirt. He wiped a sleeve across his face. Red stained the cloth.</p><p>Luffy kept his clothes on when he fucked him. A real power thing, plus he had his meeting to go to. He was a busy man. Law tossed his sandals and the syringe into the bag. One of these new generation hipsters who kicked back in his beanbag, eating muesli for breakfast, followed by six plates of bacon. Ticked the box for carbon-offsetting when he traversed the globe, wasn't too concerned what his investments did, how his assets acted, so long as the return was in his own best interests.</p><p>Law grabbed Luffy's phone and powered it off. He knew from experience that he often let the battery run down or didn't have the phone switched on, so the absence wouldn't set off any alarm bells. He spat a gob of phlegm onto the director's face. People from Flevance knew no better, had no manners, after all. Poor hygiene had wiped them out, right? He zipped up the body bag, the teeth metallic and final under his fingers.</p><p>He glanced at the other bag laid out on the mortuary slab Luffy had just fucked him on. Innocuous in its own way if not for that custom-made hole Luffy had gleefully shown him, wiggling his fingers through the gap.</p><p>"Your ass, Law. Right here. Hungry for us."</p><p>Law heaved. Not the time to get sick. No time to think about the white and grime that covered his body and which his clothes stuck to. <em>Would you die for me, Torao?</em></p><p>Law hoisted the corpse, Luffy, over his shoulder and cut to the adjoining room, slipping the bag just behind the curtain to the mouth of the incinerator.</p><p>He zipped the bag down for a second more, Luffy's face bulging with asphyxiation and shock. He flipped his wrist over, the piece of shit, and it was a mortuary, there were knives. If he had time he'd lift the skin under Luffy's wrist and take that strawhat tattoo as a scalp. Law wasn't going to be the man to wear another man's ink, lose his own. But no time to rid Luffy of his pride. He fastened the bag again. Punched the corpse in its stomach and face through the cloth before securing it behind the curtain. Vengeance would have been sweet, but no time.</p><p>He had to see his crew, get his passport, get out of there.</p>
<hr/><hr/><p>"Weirdest thing." Iron scraped across concrete as the guard unlocked the door to let the prison doctor in. The redhead was dead, but other inmates might fuck with the corpse.</p><p>The doctor crossed the threshold, bag ready, first response reports shaken out.</p><p>He pried the lips of the body open. There was an unusual set to them. They had a hue to them like lipstick. Blood. He'd made sure he'd gloved up.</p><p>He wiggled his fingers around a bit. The gloves moved easily, indicating the mouth was dry, or not wet with saliva. It was filled with solid objects. Strange. He extracted one and held it to the cell light—a red bead with a translucent glow. He removed another, and another. He placed them in the small petri dish he'd set on a metal tray fused to the side of the cot. He'd bag them soon.</p><p>"Was always having a bit of a pray. Similar to the beads he took to bed with him," the guard said, eyeing the segments. "Used to find he had money in the morning, too. Like, it's weird those beads are in his mouth, but I saw him pull out some really dirty messed up bills from between his lips once."</p><p>The doctor placed another bauble on the tray.</p><p>"Don't know where the cash came from, or what was happening. Some prisoners are other inmates' bitches, but they sure as hell don't get paid." The guard jangled his keys. The doc was a prison doc, he knew these things. Plus, Kid didn't share a cell with anyone. "Anyway, those beads look like the ones he was always holding."</p><p>"Cause of death, I'd say," the doctor said, closing Kid's mouth, though it fell open again, now that he'd forced his way in. "We'll have to cut him, but seems he choked to death."</p><p>The redhead's lids lifted. His eyes rolled back and his mouth widened into a jester's grin. Neither professional reacted. A putrefying body levelled all.</p><p>The doctor put the beads in a ziplock and handed it to the guard as he rose from the cot.</p><p>The guard peered at the evidence "Letters on 'em.". He moved them between his fingers through the plastic. Couldn't contaminate them if they were already covered, and, whatever, an inmate was an inmate. Most deaths weren't investigated too deeply.</p><p>"Hmm?"</p><p>"Maybe part of the prayer? E-T-D-H-A."</p><p>"Girl's name?"</p><p>"Perhaps."</p>
<hr/><p>No-one wanted to be the first responder to gruesome scenes like this. Especially when the victim was Roronoa Zoro. He was a good nurse. All of the paramedics knew him. What was he doing going to bed with his swords? Sure, they all knew he enjoy messing around with them. They'd patched him up at times, but he generally respected them.</p><p>A scalpel? An operational scalpel as well? There was really no reason why any should be in his house.</p><p>But there was something more to it. Wrapped up like a little enchilada, though arms kind of free, one scalpel, the mighty twenty-two, pinned his hand to the mattress. A sword also pierced his forearm and secured the blanket against his body and to the bed. Another pinned him on the other side, as did another scalpel, straight through flesh and carpal muscles of his upturned palm.</p><p>But the surgical knife speared straight through his Adam's apple—Zoro's head jerked back, mouth clamped down on a third sword, teeth cracked, gums bleeding—was what really took the cake. They weren't paid enough.</p><p>No sign of forced entry. No sign of struggle. White around his mouth amongst the red. Could be some kind of shock. Role play gone wrong. Zoro harboured a ton of resentment towards the doctors he worked with, in general. He was friends with many. Below his wrist there was a black mark, a burn.</p><p>"Didn't he have that tat there? That straw hat?" one paramedic asked, feeling for a pulse.</p><p>"Yeah, maybe." The second paramedic leaned in, covering his mask with the edge of his shoulder. It was hard to distinguish anything amongst the blood and gore. He kinda recalled the tat, but was busy radioing the deets in and didn't really have time to take anything in past the swords in Zoro's forearms, and smashed into his mouth.</p><p>"Mighta burnt it off himself. Look below."</p><p>The second guy glanced over. "Heart?"</p><p>"Yeah. Could be a side-effect of the burn. Blood?"</p><p>"Probably. Pretty indistinct." But there was a tiny red imprint on Zoro's skin.</p>
<hr/><p>Chopper finished the operation. Marco was the lead surgeon, but ever since Dr Trafalgar disappeared—sent back to where he came from, Chopper heard—he'd taken on a lot more responsibility.</p><p>He really wasn't ready for such a big task, but in the middle of the surgery, patient's heart open in front of them, Marco's throat swelled and his breathing narrowed to a tortured wheeze. The scalpel shook in his hand.</p><p>Vivi suggested he leave and Chopper take over main duties. There was no time for discussion.</p><p>The operation took hours. When they left, tired, beat, now in civilians, they found the surgeon slumped in the corridor, tongue between his lips. He'd never made it to the cupboard with the antihistamines. No-one had noticed his distress, his demise. And were they print marks bruising his neck?</p><p>Vivi rushed over and turned his wrist to feel his pulse. Wow. He'd burned off the straw hat tattoo? What for? They all grieved Luffy's disappearance, but he was a free soul and bound to turn up again another day. Wanderlust was in his blood. Was this Marco's way of marking the loss?</p><p>Of course they should have dragged in more authorities, and although they were justified in their training and use of illegals, their methods might be viewed as circumspect, and the board didn't want too much scrutiny. Kid got sent away. They didn't need to be associated.</p><p>Who would've thought that along with Law's death that Luffy also vanished? The guys had let her know that they'd witnessed Trafalgar's ashes. He was definitely no longer of this world. A touch of red caught her eye. She rubbed Marco's skin. Imagining things. Looked like a tiny heart below the burn. Just blistered skin.</p><p>Marco was too cold. He'd been out there too long with no attention. The patient survived.</p>
<hr/><hr/><p>"Don't ruin that one, Ace. Took forever to get just right."</p><p>Ace blew across the arrangement. "Impermanence is the essence of ikebana, right? Transient beauty? Beauty in chaos?"</p><p>Law ran his hand at the back of his head. Portgas was a pain in death. "Yeah, but I like looking at it for the week. I don't have time to arrange a new one."</p><p>Ace blew again. It was a solid design. Law had snipped a few twists from a vine he was thinning, mixing its corkscrew turns with violet-edged daisies, and with the leaves of the gingko, fading from green to bright yellow. Yes it was impermanent, but balance was key. And it wasn't every day you found all elements.</p><p>The flowers moved but shouldn't lose their petals, not yet, but a few eyelash segments fell to the desktop. Ace gave up (the annoyance crossing Law's face was satisfaction enough) and sat back down in the chair opposite the office desk. Law stood and fussed over the design.</p><p>"Luffy tells me that Kid is dead. Marco. Zoro."</p><p>Law's hand paused mid-air. Relieved at first but were they going to visit? If Luffy was a vengeful ghost, he couldn't imagine what the three of them would be.</p><p>"They won't come here," Ace said.</p><p>Law looked across. Why not? How could he be so sure?</p><p>Ace hated to see the shadow chase out the light. "Luff's connected to me, so he wanted to see me. I wanted to see you were okay, so you were a glimmer in Luffy's side vision. And you did kill him. His connection to you was stronger at first than it was to me."</p><p>Law ran a thumbnail against his cheekbone. Yeah. But.</p><p>"You didn't kill them," Ace added.</p><p>Law's jaw and shoulders tipped up and back. Slightly. He wanted to believe Fire Fist. And he hadn't killed them True.</p><p>"You'll forgive Luffy?"</p><p>Law's laugh clawed the air, and he almost pushed his arrangement off the desk.</p><p>"You thinking of throwing that at me?"</p><p>"Yep." Emphatic.</p><p>"That's my job, y'know, to hurl things around like an angry poltergeist."</p><p>"I know." Law walked back to his chair but didn't sit. "Are there peaceful poltergeists?"</p><p>Ace jabbed a thumb at his chest. He sat, legs casual and wide. "Though I'm more of a ghost. Anyway, Luff feels his debt is done, and that perhaps he's atoned for what he did?"</p><p>Law stood over his table, hands pushed down, viewing the surface, a minute tremor running up his forearms. "No." He shook his head, thin-lipped. "Never."</p><p>"But you'll let him go?"</p><p>"Fuck yeah. Get him out of my life."</p><p>"Me too, Law. I gotta go too."</p><p>Law looked up. He didn't want that, but it wasn't healthy for ghosts to haunt the living forever.</p><p>Ace stood and walked over to Law, and Law straightened. He was wearing a tie again. Nice sky blue. Possibly the tie attracted Ace. He was pretty good with tactile and tangible things. He adjusted it, tightening the knot a touch. Classes had ended for the day. Law didn't need for it to be too exact. He patted it, happy with his work. Gauged Law's expression.</p><p>"You know that thing you do when you visit the boys?"</p><p>Law stared at him, quizzical. Portgas visited Shachi and the crew?</p><p>"You know," he spoke to the tie once more, then directly to Law, "When you sit and eat and hold your fork but the food never makes it to your mouth?"</p><p>Law brushed the back of his wrist under his eye.</p><p>"Cos' you're crying. Seeing something we can't?"</p><p>Like Ace, Law thought, but not Ace. A crowd of darkness. Bodies, cold, canvas hemming him in.</p><p>"You're doing it now." Ace's touch was like the breeze as he swept flattened fingers under Law's eye, Law jerking back at the idea of anything coming that close to his face.</p><p>"Shh."</p><p>Law relaxed. Wiped both palms over his face. They were wet. He prayed to god he didn't do that in class.</p><p>Ace took his hand and pressed a small object into the damp skin. Light. Law opened his hand. A piece of jigsaw. A fiery flower.</p><p>"Sorry I couldn't stop them."</p><p>Law turned the piece.</p><p>"At the hospital. When Vivi threw them out the window. I didn't have much form then. Even to catch that took all my effort."</p><p>Law recalled the pieces—some caught in the current, others falling below. He'd peered out the window once Vivi and Zoro had left. A few pieces sat next to pigeon shit and leaves on the ledges of the floor below.</p><p>"I wish I could've stopped them."</p><p>That made two of them. Law put his own hands over the ghost hands that had returned to the tie. He stared at Ace. Fire fist had given him hope. Even if it was just a hello in the morning. When there was nothing. When every day was a pit. Ace's voice, or the way he glanced up from the gardening, and the welcome in his face and the smile that crossed it when he saw Law, he played through all that as he lay next to Kid in bed, or in the middle of a session. It pulled him through. As small as it was. Gave him something to look forward to.</p><p>"Sorry I couldn't—" Law began, trying to press his fingers into Ace's skin, speaking as Ace spoke.</p><p>"—save you," Ace finished, they both finished.</p><p>'It was my job," and Law pushed the ghostly hat brim up, the jigsaw piece now in his trouser pocket. How many times had he heard what a failure he was for not saving Ace, and it was true. How many times had he been punished for that failure? Did he deserve it? Part of him didn't know.</p><p>"It wasn't your fault. Really it wasn't"</p><p>Law felt a brush of cold against his forehead as he tried to hold the back of Portgas' head, to bring his forehead close to his own. Then Ace was gone and he was left holding air.</p>
<hr/><p>He dropped his hands to his side, clenching and unclenching them. Then he sat, and stared at his shoes for a few long minutes, breath deep low and arctic before lifting his gaze. The violet of the arrangement to his left blurred. He raised his head further. The room was empty.</p>
<hr/><p>Knocks, panicked and loud. Law called out for the visitor to come in but the knob twisted and the door burst open drowning out his words.</p><p>"Boss!" Bepo stumbled through into the office. The door was unlocked? He hadn't needed to shoulder it.</p><p>Law looked up with a smile. Bepo was his ride. They were meeting Penguin and Shachi for drinks. His tie sat to his right, loose on the desk. He picked it up and shoved it into his messenger bag.</p><p>Bepo straightened. "Boss. The door. It's closed..."</p><p>Law peered out at the empty corridor, then at Bepo. He reached for his papers, keys. "Yeah," he said.</p><p>"Who shut it?"</p><p>Law picked at the jumble of pens, and arranged three in front of the ikebana. A little offering to Ace. "I did."</p><p>Bepo crossed the floor. "Nothing happened, right? You always keep it open."</p><p>Was the red pen better in front of the green, or should the black pen have precedence? He signed.</p><p>—It's okay. Needed to return his gaze to Bepo.</p><p>—It's okay? his friend signed back. Law nodded. Set the red pen at the front. "I owe you guys about a hundred cases of beer for taking care of me." He stood, stretched, touched upon the four corners of the jigsaw in his pocket. Penguin had kept them for him and returned them once the team was safe. Law had stored them in a recess in the top tray of his desk, but now they joined the piece from Ace.</p><p>Kid was dead. Luffy, Marco, Zoro. Ace was gone. But he had his crew.</p><p>"Who keeps wrecking your arrangements?" Bepo noticed the fallen petals, and frowned at the ordered pens. Then he noted the scattered items on the desk and the way Law had stuffed the tie into his bag. He was okay.</p><p>"Fire Fist."</p><p>"He still hanging around?" Bepo was glad to hear it.</p><p>Not any more, Law thought.</p><p>"Only to see I'm fine. Was saying goodbye."</p><p>"And you are?"</p><p>Law headed from the room, and Bepo joined him. He pushed Bepo a little ahead of him as he locked the door after him. He fished Laurent Lee's glasses from his top pocket. Ace was good too. He visited to let Law know all was well.</p><p>"Never been better."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'm not a medical expert, so things pertaining to medical procedures and knowledge above are sure to be faulty. Thank you for reading, and for your comments, observations and discussions on previous chapters. Thanks to all those who dropped kudos as well. As said, be kind to yourselves out there.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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